Jeremy Corbyn thinks the wealthy don't pay enough tax - he's wrong

Some years ago, I worked in the House of Commons as Westminster correspondent for The Independent.

I had a free-roaming brief, and part of my job was to get to know as many MPs as possible, from both sides, left and right. Most were friendly and willing to have a chat, and several shared stories. One, though, stood out resolutely as always not wanting to know.

While I knew left-wing MPs and was able to share a cup of tea or a beer with them, Jeremy Corbyn remained aloof. Attempts to engage with him came to nought.

It wasn’t personal. I checked with colleagues and journalists at other papers, and he would not talk to them either. His preferred contact was with the Morning Star. The rest of us, it seems, were puppets of the capitalist money-making machine.

Reading Tom Bower’s insightful new biography, Dangerous Hero: Corbyn’s Ruthless Plot for Power, I was reminded of his isolation and single-mindedness. What struck me back then was Corbyn’s determination. He never flinched, did not once drop his guard, would not throw his hands in the air and say, “pull up a chair”.

It’s a memory that has stayed. Talk to business people and they cite their fear of John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor. Corbyn, they dismiss as lacking the intellect and robustness of his lieutenant. But that’s the point, as Bower makes clear – Corbyn is the leader, the orchestrator, the politician who has travelled a long, singular road to the top. He may not have the academic qualifications, he may seem to lack gravitas and at times appear woolly. He is undoubtedly surrounded by people sharper and brighter than he is, like McDonnell. None of it matters. They answer to him.

There is a fascinating section in Bower’s book that focuses on Corbyn’s economic beliefs. What makes it especially interesting is because it’s rare for Corbyn to expound on domestic policy – he’s much more at home discussing a conflict between socialist rebels and an incumbent administration in some far-flung territory.

Corbyn believes that the UK wealthy do not pay enough tax. Writes Bower, he would like a return to the James Callaghan era, when the country’s richest paid a top rate of 98 per cent tax on income. Bower tries to counter that with the correct assertion that the top 1 per cent of British taxpayers already contribute 27 per cent of the nation’s income tax take, and the top 10 per cent pay 59 per cent; a higher proportion than the richest 10 per cent of Germany’s population pay.

Such comparisons almost certainly count for little with Corbyn – the man who would rather sit on his own reading the Morning Star is not going to be easily persuaded, not least with a glance in the direction of what he must regard as the loathsomely financially corrupt and socially unjust Germany.

Likewise, when Corbyn proposed “people’s quantitative easing”, the printing by the Bank of England of new money sufficient to meet the government’s requirements he brushed aside the possibility that this would lead to hyperinflation, and repetition of what occurred in Weimar Germany in the 1920s, Zimbabwe after 2010, and more recently, Venezuela. He simply did not want to listen.

Similarly, he would like to recreate a new national investment bank pumping hundreds of millions of pounds into Britain’s motor industry. The route to prosperity “is a collective process between workers, public investment and services, and yes, often innovative and creative individuals”. You can feel the hesitancy and reluctance accompanying the citation of that last grouping.

It is true that in the 1970s, Britain did make cars. But the sector now is a shadow of its former self. Worse, Nissan will not be using Sunderland to manufacture its new X-Trail SUV, and Honda in Swindon has signalled its intention to shut completely.

It’s as if Corbyn has failed to register the onset of globalisation, the closure of factories across the land caused by cheaper labour and greater productivity elsewhere, and the fact that a large measure of what success Britain has achieved economically in the last few decades is down to the growth of the City of London and financial services.

In his eyes, the City was to blame for the crisis of 2008 and its aftermath. That may be so but he chooses to discount the explosion in jobs in finance and the success it enjoyed before and since. Indeed, without the City, the UK would be in far worse shape.

But the rose-tinted spectacles of this class warrior only see romance in metal-bashing and the honest sweat and toil of the shop floor. Quite how he intends to deal with the advent of the likes of artificial intelligence, robots and 3D printing is not clear.

Reading Bower, you’re left in no doubt that Corbyn wants to turn the clock back, that his solution to those problematic examples and awkward developments that upset his path is merely to ignore them. This makes him very dangerous indeed, hard to reason with, oblivious to criticism and set in his ways. It’s a troubling account, one that should give every entrepreneur pause and anyone who works in business pause. I want to scream and tell Corbyn to follow current events in Venezuela, and examine the chaos and strife that have befallen that country. I would, I fear, be wasting my time.

Chris Blackhurst is a former editor of The Independent, and director of C|T|F Partners, the campaigns, strategic, crisis and reputational, and communications advisory firm