Against the odds and despite a non-existent record of public service, Jeremy Corbyn has brought the Labour Party to election day within touching distance, in some opinion polls, of the Conservatives.
Voters should be in no doubt. There is a reason for this non-existent record. Mr Corbyn has never been much interested in serving the British public. He has used his long career as a backbench MP to campaign instead on niche issues ranging from nuclear disarmament to the plight of the Palestinian people. He has every right to his views, but he is no more plausible as a potential prime minister than he ever was as a frontbench spokesman for his party. That is why no previous Labour leader ever asked him to join a cabinet or shadow cabinet, and why responsible voters should not trust him today. It is not fearmongering to say a government led by Mr Corbyn would be a disaster for Britain. It is a statement of fact.
Two years ago Mr Corbyn stood for the Labour leadership as a representative of the party’s hard-left Campaign Group. He did so reluctantly, because no one else would, in order to “promote some causes”. Those causes do not amount to a vision for Britain any more than the policies in the Labour manifesto amount to a thought-through prospectus for government. They are a wish-list assembled in haste to turn heads and make headlines. If enacted they would bankrupt the country by raising borrowing and the cost of borrowing, deterring foreign and domestic investment and shrinking the tax base.
Renationalising utilities and the railways would add tens of billions to the national balance sheet. Lowering the retirement age as the population gets older is an error as basic as adding two and two to make five. The country cannot afford it. As Paul Johnson of the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies confirmed yesterday, Labour’s numbers simply “do not add up”.
Mr Corbyn has been able to present himself in this campaign as a conventional left-winger who happens to be more left-wing than any of his predecessors. In truth he is a protester, not a politician. He is fundamentally opposed to the free market economics on which Britain’s continued prosperity depends and fundamentally unqualified to lead the country towards Brexit.
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In person, Mr Corbyn can be charming. So can Donald Trump. This does not make either of them wise. In this campaign the Labour leader has rattled the Conservatives by halving the gap between the two main parties even in the most cautious polls, but campaigning is not government. Mr Corbyn would appoint as chancellor a fellow tribune of the left who has listed as a hobby “fermenting [sic] the overthrow of capitalism”. He would install at the Home Office Diane Abbott, assuming she recovers from her illness. Ms Abbott has been painfully unprepared for a series of recent interviews. She is manifestly unqualified to take responsibility for police and counterterrorism as the nation recovers from three attacks in as many months and strives to prevent the next.
Mr Corbyn says his enemies misrepresent him when they accuse him of tolerating antisemitism. He wriggles when reminded of his support for IRA terrorists and for his “friends” in Hezbollah. Yet he cannot complain of being misquoted. He uttered these words. They reveal much about his past that he would prefer voters to forget, and about a world view that bears little relation to reality.
Just as John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, cites Das Kapital and Mao’s Little Red Book as inspirations, so Mr Corbyn regards US foreign policy as a malign force behind most of the world’s problems. He spoke yesterday of a choice between hope and fear. The choice facing Britain is in fact between Theresa May’s doggedness and Mr Corbyn’s delusions. It should be an easy one to make.