Bernard Ingham: Jeremy Corbyn's kingdom would take us on a republican road to ruin

To start with, the monarchy would be on its way out. President Corbyn, in studied jeans and jumper, would scarcely be able to contain his impatience to sit on the republican throne.

In March 2019 we are supposed to wake up as an independent nation again. Unfortunately, the Corbynistas have no more intention of leaving the European Union than Vladimir Putin of giving up the Kremlin.

It is against their majority inclination and their allies – the Liberal Democrats, and the various nationalists in the form of the SNP, Plaid Cymru and Sinn Fein – simply would not have it.

The UK would, however, be no more. The Scots would be independent within their cherished EU; Sinn Fein would know that a United Ireland is on its way, if not already established; and Plaid Cymru would be demanding independence.

Against this background the Tories’ £1bn deal with the Democratic Unionist Party, however much it may now rankle, would seem cheap at the price.

Indeed, it would be.

By 2019 the British economy would be on the road to ruin.

That can confidently be predicted because Corbyn the Messiah – to judge from his reception by the litter-loutish bourgeoisie at Glastonbury (minimum entry fee £238) – proposes to send the national debt soaring beyond £2 trillion, and to hell with the current budget deficit of £50bn.

The cost of borrowing would have soared, unemployment would probably be above two million and money would be flowing out of the country like water unless the Government had, by then, introduced exchange controls.

This is not fanciful. We know what happened with previous much more moderate Labour governments. Even Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, uniquely inheriting a solvent Britain in 1997, left a mountainous £153bn budget deficit.

And just look at the pig’s ear the Scottish Nationalists and the Labour Party in Wales are making of devolution.

Scotland’s debt is appalling and its performance on the NHS, education and police, and that of Wales on the NHS, point to the social services being in a bigger mess than now.

This is because Corbyn believes that throwing other people’s money at problems wishes them away.

It should be obvious by now to his class warriors that what matters is not money spent but how it is used.

They cannot see this because they are blind to appalling public sector management deficiencies and the deadweight of the teaching unions and lack of parental discipline, not to mention chief constables and their love of new toys.

In any case, we know that chucking money at public servants is counter-productive. You just encourage waste on such things as police cars specially decked out for Gay Pride day, unisex loos in schools, university vice chancellors enriching themselves at the students’ expense and the NHS and local government top brass waxing fat on the taxpayer.

A Corbyn government would exacerbate all these problems, if not completely ruin the public services.

How can I think this?

Well, I need say no more than Len McCluskey, the leader of the Unite union, and Corbyn’s chief financier. He is bad enough as it is for the national wellbeing.

But Corbyn has promised him Heaven on Earth – a repeal of the Tories’ trade union acts which brought an amazing industrial peace after the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s.

In 2019 we should be rediscovering the joys of nationalisation, notably on the railways. The present Southern region would by then seem to be a paragon of punctuality.

But worse than all this would be the return of the closed shop. Gone would be the freedom of the individual to decide whether to belong to a trade union and probably his ability to contract out of party political contributions. He would be under iron control.

This gives you the clue to the ultimate damage wreaked on this still remarkably democratic nation. Corbyn and the sinister Marxist, John McDonnell, behind him are no democrats.

Like McCluskey, they are in the business of naked power for themselves. Dissent would have gone out of the window. Intimidation and thuggery would be in.

Editors will be under enormous pressure to sack writers like me. After all, under Blair’s “Third Way” out of socialism, Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell waged war against independent-minded journalists and tried to get them fired.

Believe me, one false move and the totalitarian state is at hand.