Wednesday 17 August 2016

Avoiding The Issues

Or not.

The simple presence of Jeremy Corbyn as Leader of the Labour Party has already caused Theresa May to adopt much of Ed Miliband's manifesto.

Today, on tax avoidance, she and Philip Hammond have taken up much of  the very longstanding programme of John McDonnell.

May's party, and the dominant wing of McDonnell's party in parliamentary terms, have always maintained that tax avoidance was not in principle a problem.

But today, only one of them is still saying that. It is not the Conservative Party.

This morning, we heard Corbyn call, in the Spirit of '45, for greatly increased economic growth through investment in infrastructure and education.

By contrast, Smith's supporters, at least, are being funded by people who not only funded Liberal Democrat candidates after five years of the Coalition, but also funded the re-election campaign of Caroline Lucas.

Lucas is so far from the Spirit of '45 that she advocates zero economic growth.

One wonders what objection she could have had, then, to the Government of David Cameron, George Osborne, Nick Clegg and Vince Cable.

That last is a key intellectual guiding light of at least one of the backers of Smith's supporters.

One wonders, indeed, what objection Smith could have had to that Government, either.

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