Douglas Carswell

Would a Corbyn manifesto be allowed under EU law?

What if Comrade Corbyn wins?  Just imagine what might appear in the next Labour manifesto.

A Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour party would promise to take over the energy industry. The trains, they tell us, would be run by the state. Oil and gas companies would face nationalisation, the banks (re) nationalisation.

Those that rented houses, it has been suggested, would be given a legal right to buy their homes.

First under Tony Blair, then David Cameron, private providers have been allowed to deliver select NHS services and education. These reforms would be reversed, the state reinstated once more as the monopoly provider.

But hold on a moment.....  Would these changes be allowed under EU law?

European Union rules say that there has to be competition in certain sectors. Nationalisation would remove that. With non-UK companies and capital involved in everything from UK energy to banking, surely any efforts to expropriate such assets could be stopped as a violation of UK treaty obligations?

Even if a Corbyn-led Labour party won an election, much of its manifesto might be vetoed by Brussels.

Surely, you'd think, that is a reason to be in favour of Brussels?  At least the EU would save us from socialism.

Except it won't.  It is the EU that is giving out dated lefties a new lease of life right across Europe.

Far from being pro-free market, Brussels is a corporatist scam. Everything is run for the convenience of big business and big bureaucracy.

Under the Brussels system, profits are made by rentiers able to lay claim to public revenues. Capital is locked up in pursuit of subsidy. Amassing wealth is less about innovation in the pursuit of contented customers, and more a matter of gaining regulatory permission denied to rivals.

This, of course, gives capitalism a bad name. Which in turn is what makes Corbyn and co credible.  His policy prescriptions might be 180 degrees wrong, but there is an element of truth in Owen Jones' critique of The Establishment.

If the social and economic affairs of millions of Europeans can be organised by blueprint, why not, voters might ask, make it a socialist, rather than a corporatist, blueprint?  Brussels corporatism makes socialism more plausible.  If energy companies can be told how to generate energy, why not tell them at what price to sell it?      

When Britain joined what was to become the EU, we were told it would guarantee the free movement of goods, services and capital. The free market system, it was suggested, would be somehow locked in.

Except it isn't.  The single market is not a free market.  The EU is has produced a grisly corporatism, which is generating precisely the sort of retro socialism we struggled so hard to escape.

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