Religion & Liberty Online

How would Jeremy Corbyn change the UK?

American observers may know that Jeremy Corbyn wishes to fundamentally transform the British economy and reshape the special relationship between the U.S. and the UK. “Is it moral to confiscate people’s property and deny the elderly the right to control their own property?” asks Rev. Richard Turnbull, as he explores Corbyn’s economic proposals, from providing “free” services to the full nationalization of whole industries.

For instance, Corbyn’s economic plan would destroy £367 billion of stock wealth. Turnbull – the director of the Centre for Enterprise, Markets, and Ethics (CEME) in Oxford – unravels Corbyn’s view of the future in a new essay on the Acton Institute’s Religion & Liberty Transatlantic website titled, “The economic and moral impact of the Labour Party’s 2019 manifesto.”

After revealing the six key planks of Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign for prime minister, Turnbull writes:

The most pressing question facing voters about the 2019 UK general election is whether the electorate is equipped to see through the truly devastating effects of these proposals, least of all the 16 year olds who will get the vote under a Corbyn government. No one under the age of 50 remembers the previous attempts at state ownership, the extreme levels of taxation in the 1970s, or the time when trade unions had such a stranglehold on the economy that we worked – not a four-day week, but a state imposed three-day work week – because the state could not supply the electricity to run factories (or homes).

Read his full essay here.

(Photo credit: Jeremy Corbyn. This photo has been cropped. CC BY 2.0.)

Rev. Ben Johnson

Rev. Ben Johnson (@therightswriter) is an Eastern Orthodox priest and served as Executive Editor of the Acton Institute (2016-2021), editing Religion & Liberty, the Powerblog, and its transatlantic website. He has extensively researched the Alt-Right. Previously, he worked for LifeSiteNews and FrontPageMag.com, where he wrote three books including Party of Defeat (with David Horowitz, 2008). His work has appeared at DailyWire.com, National Review, The American Spectator, The Guardian, Daily Caller, National Catholic Register, Spectator USA, FEE Online, RealClear Policy, The Blaze, The Stream, American Greatness, Aleteia, Providence Magazine, Charisma, Jewish World Review, Human Events, Intellectual Takeout, CatholicVote.org, Issues & Insights, The Conservative, Rare.us, and The American Orthodox Institute. His personal websites are therightswriter.com and RevBenJohnson.com. His views are his own.