[Ramrod]

I still can't get my head around the fact that there are 31% who would vote for Labour!

What will happen if Jeremy Corbyn wins? France provides a useful parallel of what prime minister Jeremy Corbyn might mean for Britain. And it doesn’t make happy reading for the Labour leader.

It’s Spring 1981 and France, the fifth largest economy in the world, elects the most left-wing administration since before the Second World War following eight years of conservative rule. The government immediately begins implementing its radical manifesto: nationalisation of 11 industrial conglomerates and most private banks, higher tax-rates at the upper levels and a special wealth tax. There is also a 15 per cent rise in the minimum wage and a 25 per cent boost for social benefits. A 39-hour working week is introduced. So, too, are five weeks’ paid holidays as standard and retirement at 60, increased old age pensions, greater workers’ rights, free prescription charges and regularisation of illegal immigrants.

And, of course, massive government borrowing. The country’s new socialist leader lays flowers on the tomb of a great socialist hero. Culture minister Jack Lang proclaims the country to have ‘moved from the shadows into light.’

Fast forward to Spring 1983. Two years of spiralling budget deficits, uncontrolled national debt, three currency devaluations, falling exports and a dramatic increase in unemployment have left the economy in a parlous state.

Bowing to the European communities’ demands for financial rigour, the country’s socialist leader implements an austerity policy. Economic difficulties and cuts provoke cabinet divisions, key ministerial resignations and widespread anger at the left’s betrayal of its electorate. The reshuffled socialist government suffers badly in the 1983 local and 1984 European elections. That socialist government is finally defeated in the 1986 general elections when a conservative prime minister is elected.

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