YP Letters: Corbyn and his followers have not learned from history

JEREMY Corbyn’s manifesto is the last utterance of a man who knows he is about to be engulfed by a tsunami. He has just unleashed his life’s work in grand style. For years he sat on the backbenches in relative obscurity plugging away at his socialist philosophy, resenting the centrists of his own party.

And by sheer luck and opportunism he was able to fulfil the dream, not for his own leadership ambition, but to present to the country a project that oozed out of his every ideological pore.

Fortunately, for this country, he has as little hope of implementing his Utopian fantasy as a Reliant Robin would have of winning at Monza.

Francoise Hollande tried to transform France in a socialist revolution. He failed like most left-wing ideologues. But Corbyn’s reforms make the ex-French President’s look like extracts from Thatcherism.

Even in the 70s when two Labour governments ruled over a degenerating economy and reduced the country to a sick man of Europe status, the socialist programme was nowhere near as drastic as Corbyn’s 2017 projection.

These include killer taxation on higher income groups that will destroy growth as well as reduce aggregate tax revenues; businesses throttled by burdensome rises in corporation tax; nationalisation to guarantee the blight of public inefficiency and red tape; borrowing on a massive and onerous scale; the unleashing of militant unionism. Jeremy is making history, and will go down in history, but it is clear by the contents of this manifesto, and the reception it has been given by his passionate followers, that they’ve never learned from history.

From: Ron Farley, Croftway, Camblesforth, Selby.

IN the election column headed Campaign Watch (The Yorkshire Post, May 19), it states: “It was a bad day for pensioners, many of whom are set to lose out on up to £300 a week in winter fuel payments.” The winter fuel payment is a one-off annual payment to help meet the cost of winter heating bills. The £300 is for a household that includes a pensioner aged 80 or over during the qualifying week. That is one person over 80 years of age, and not for each one.

From: Hilary Andrews, Nursery Lane, Leeds.

IN Spain driving on fabulous pothole free roads paid for by the EU and UK money. Thank goodness we have voted to leave.