Socialism Trumped

I was taken aback a few days ago to find myself in violent agreement with something Donald Trump said in his speech to the UN:

"From the Soviet Union to Cuba to Venezuela, wherever true socialism or communism has been adopted, it has delivered anguish, devastation and failure".

The only thing I would add to that is that milder forms of socialism tend to head in the same direction but at a slower pace, witness the 1970s Labour government ending in the disarray of the winter of discontent and the Blair/Brown hegemony, with its gross over spending, leaving us horribly vulnerable to the global financial crisis and leading directly to the decade of hard slog (austerity if you will) that we have had to swallow to get even half way back towards stability.

Trump was widely derided for tweeting that President Obama had his wires tapped in Trump Tower just before his election victory. That might have been false news, but it has now emerged that the FBI did wire tap Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort: they were looking into links to Russia and had a court warrant. It is still not clear if Manafort will be charged, or if evidence to impeach Trump will emerge because of contacts with the successor to the Soviet state Trump slagged off in his speech.

Be that as it may and notwithstanding the amount of tripe that he utters, the Donald has spoken of a universal truth. One that is surely obvious. Though not to the band of apologists for the ultra-left, which just happens to be lead by the dangerously popular Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition.

Popular partly because of populist policies, like significantly reducing university tuition fees and reducing the interest rate on student "loans". Policies which would misallocate resources to the few not the many, as anyone who has heard moneysavingexpert.com's Martin Lewis speak passionately on this subject will know. And, ironically, couldn't remotely be called socialist.

There are sensible reforms to higher education and its funding that could be made, but I don't expect to hear any proposed this week in Brighton.  And there are more pressing issues for funding, though presumably Labour don't think they would be as popular.

Indeed, I don't expect to hear much sense coming from there at all, even though John McDonnell has suddenly switched to lauding Harold Wilson and his government's empty soundbite about the "white heat of technology" rather than Marx, as he tries to reposition himself towards the mainstream (a very long distance). I expect to hear plenty of sloganeering about the many not the few and lots of stuff on unquantified and unaffordable policies which would be counterproductive to that aspiration.

Corbyn and McDonnell would get us into trouble much more quickly than Wilson, Callaghan, Blair or Brown and without the competence of a Jenkins, Healey or Darling to steady the ship.

Given the huge potential for the Tories to drop the ball, or just commit political hara-kiri all I can say is - life jackets at the ready!