The poisonous prescription of socialism

The UK must say 'No' to the dreadful diet of socialist policies prescribed by Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party, warns John Redwood. 

Some socialists start with the best of intentions.

They say, let's pass a law to cut the prices of basics so people can be better off.

If they do it too much businesses stop providing the goods and supermarket shelves empty.

They say, let's tax the rich more to give money to the poor.

If they do that too much the rich take their money and their businesses, their jobs and their ideas, to a country which taxes less.

They say let's take over profitable businesses, so we can use the profits to pay for public services

Once they've taken them over they usually starve them of investment and talent, driving great industries into loss and sacking employees to balance the books

They say let's just print some money to give more to the poor

That way leads to more inflation, often leaving the very people they wanted to help worse off, unable to afford the basics.

This is something we can learn from our history books

Labour's great nationalised industries sacked hundreds of thousands of people, lumbered taxpayers with huge losses and failed to serve the customer well.

Labour's big spending sprees led to too much borrowing, to sterling crises and to high inflation

The final ignominy came when their policy meant the UK had to beg for a loan from the IMF, an organisation designed to help poor countries, as the country struggled from recession to recession

Labour's tax assault on success led to the brain drain, as energetic and able people moved abroad.

This is also something we can learn again today by looking at poor Venezuela.

Mr Corbyn heralded the government of Venezuela as a new way, an alternative to the capitalism he hates in free western societies.

Thanks to laws cutting prices, to nationalisation, printing money , high taxes and state control, the economy is in collapse.

The rich and the not so rich are rushing across the border to get away from the regime that torments them

The nationalised oil industry produces precious little oil despite the huge size of the reserves, starved of capital and good management

Supermarket shelves are largely empty, with companies unwilling to make and trade in such a damaged economy

The poor have been given large increases in benefits, only to end up worse off as inflation soars to make their money almost valueless

The state keeps spending money it does not have, so inflation surges making trading almost impossible.

The UK must say No to such a dreadful diet of policies.

We can offer a much better alternative.