“No compromise with reality” is the first rule of the far left, and the Labour Party’s election manifesto sticks closely to that rule. The Institute for Fiscal Studies said that Labour’s

spending plans are “not credible”. The amounts of money promised can neither be raised by the tax package proposed nor spent in the timescales envisaged. For once the devil isn’t in the

detail, the devil is in plain sight. Beveridge’s five evils — want, squalor, idleness, ignorance, disease — have been replaced with just two: billionaires and big business. And while they

may be the ostensible target, we will all be the collateral damage. Just look at key areas. Spending? The sky’s the limit, as the weekend announcement on the state pension for women shows.

transition of over 20 years. This is buying votes on an industrial scale, but is all of a piece with Labour’s profligate approach to the public sector. It will all be alright, Labour

reassures voters. The increased taxation — some four per cent of GDP — will be paid by the rich and by corporations. We are assured that the plans are reasonable because the levels of

spending as a proportion of national wealth would be similar to that of a Scandinavian country. But there are heroic assumptions in the Labour sums to make their calculations work. Take a

quick look at those countries and you will see that the tax burden falls on middle-income households too. Then ask yourself what would a Corbyn government do if the tax take from plutocrats

wasn’t sufficient? Would they scale back their spending ambitions or would they reach for your wallet? On corporate taxation, the Labour view would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous.

Corbyn’s view of companies is that they are like Scrooge, and that somewhere in their basements is a vault full of gold doubloons. The reality of corporate taxation is that any increase is

paid for by lower wages for workers, higher prices for consumers, or lower dividends to shareholders (ie pension funds). Corporate taxation is like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow

— non-existent. But like all taxation, it does not take place in a vacuum. There will be behaviour change. Outside the European Union, the UK will need to be especially attractive to

investment. Labour plans the very opposite. Their tax plans for the oil and gas industry are not a windfall tax, they are a retrospective tax, based on the idea that not enough was paid in

the past. Once established, the principle could roll on and on. Why not a “windfall tax” on the food industry for the costs obesity inflicts on the NHS? Or a tax on sin industries, like

brewing and bingo, because of the costs of problem drinking and problem gambling. As for industrial policy, it is Bennism on steroids. The wholesale nationalisation will be at a price

“determined by Parliament”. If there is a golden thread through Labour policy it is an assault on property rights. The plan to confiscate the buildings, land and charitable foundations of

private schools has been dropped, for the moment. But the forced transfer of 10 per cent of the shares of UK-listed companies to their workers remains. This is also part of an extensive

agenda on employment rights which pledges to “reverse” Tory union legislation, but which in fact goes much further. John McDonnell has confirmed that secondary action would be lawful again,

but so too would mass picketing, and car park strike ballots by a show of hands. At the same time, unions would be given automatic recognition in firms of over 250 staff. This, in Labour’s

plans, would then provide the basis for sectoral pay bargaining. Since less than one in six private sector workers are covered by collective bargaining of any form, this would be a huge

change. And the private sector is at an all-time high in the UK — only 16.5 per cent of workers are employed by the pubic sector. One could say of Labour’s plans that the era of Big

Government is back, but that underestimates the scale of the proposed changes. What is proposed is a socialist economy, something tried and failed in country after country during the 20th 

century. But Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell appear to have adopted a modified form of Samuel Beckett’s famous adage: “Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Worse.” Were this Labour government to be

elected, the results in the UK would be the same as faced by François Mitterand in 1981. Firms would relocate. There would be capital flight and a run on the pound and, in response, capital

controls and a siege economy. It would be just like Mitterand, with one difference — there will be no reverse gear. Naomi Klein wrote of “disaster capitalism”, this is the first — and

hopefully only — UK sighting of Disaster Socialism.