Hands off my ticker, Jezza!
The Labour Party showed its extreme left credentials at this year's conference in Brighton. Their policy proposals now include extending their plans for control of an individual's property to include their right to get their hands on our organs, says Rory Broomfield.
"Oh, Jeremy Corbyn" was the chant from the audience in the main hall after the far-left leader of the Labour Party had finished a mammoth speech before the socialist 'Red Flag' was hoisted and song was sung to close the Party's 2017 'victory' conference in Brighton.
I put the word victory in inverted commas because, unlike many that attended the Labour conference, I realise that the Labour Party did not win the 2017 General Election. If they had done so Jeremy Corbyn would be Prime Minister and the country would already be bankrupt.
Indeed, it was revealed at conference that the party has been 'war-gaming' the scenario that there is a run on the Pound as a result of their own policies. With the country in record amounts of debt, combined with the huge increase in the deficit the Party first pledged to manufacture at the last election, a pledge upon which they seem determined to build on, a far-left Labour government could only spell disaster for this country.
What we learnt from both Corbyn's speech and the conference itself is that there are a whole array of changes the party wishes to make to decrease your freedom.
Many of them were to do with tax. Of course, the self-declared Marxist, John McDonnell, took pride that the Labour Party would reverse the policy it built up under the Blair years and scrap PFI contracts. The cost? £59.4 billion.
They also still want to nationalise energy, transport and water. Cost? £250 billion as part of the Labour Party's 'National Transformation Fund' – seemingly transforming the nation into ruin.
This is of course on top of their now wavering pledge to scrap university tuition fees – along with the new policy of rent controls. It is part of a long list of policies that would bankrupt the UK.
It's therefore a good thing that Theresa May will make a speech on the importance of the free market. She'll be making the speech at the Bank of England which is marking its 20 years of independence from Government. It is, of course, ironic to think of the Bank as being in the free market – as it is still a central bank – but it's in desperate need of effort by the Government to restate the positives that capitalism can deliver. In principle (if not in detail), the move should be welcomed.
However, Corbyn's speech and the Labour Party conference went way beyond the issue of tax and the economy. Of course, there was much debate about a range of subjects, but what strikes me as dangerous is the new policy, announced by Corbyn, that there would be an automatic enrolment system for organ donation should Labour be elected. This would mean individuals would have to opt of – rather than into – donating their organs. It would turn the basic sense of ownership on its head. If Corbyn got his way on this, it would extend the reaches of the state to presume ownership of your property, including your body.
It just sums up the delusion that is on the far-left that this is seen as OK. That it should be that the state can use your organs (on death) without explicit consent. If not your organs, why not everything else you own? It takes the reach of the state too far.
Indeed, going too far seemed to sum up Corbyn's speech quite nicely. It was laughable that he took a section of his speech to claim that the far-left Labour Party occupied the centre ground of British politics.
Laughable, but dangerous.
