Let’s go for a lyrical opening to this column: “The newspapers shout a new style is growing, but I don’t know if it’s coming or going, there is fashion, there is fad, some is good, some is bad, and the joke – rather sad – that it’s all just a little bit of history repeating.”
The song, History Repeating, was released in June 1997 when the UK was basking in New Labour’s glow, but it’s been stuck in my head for the last few days, propelled there by the sight of Green Party leader Zack Polanski banging the drum for fantasy economics in a way not seen since Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell were running the Labour party.
Editing this newspaper throughout the Corbyn experiment, I kept a close eye on the hard-left Labour leader whenever he strayed into business or financial matters. Such ventures rarely tended to go well for him. He had a habit of mixing up private equity with hedge funds, for example. A trivial matter, you might say, but it spoke to a level of ignorance that concerned (or at least annoyed) me at the time.
He was also forever banging on about nationalising industry, soaking the rich and defeating evil corporations. Thankfully, the British public rejected Corbyn & Co, and politics (Brexit aside) returned to something more centrist; liberal Tories arguing with Starmer’s social democrats. But recently, history has started to repeat itself.
Polanski is the new Corbyn, and like Magic Grandpa before him he’s now whipping up chants at music festivals and going viral on social media. “It’s time to tax the rich,” he declared on the BBC over the weekend, having called for a one per cent tax on “assets over £10m.” He also enjoys the line that “billionaires should not exist” while those lower down the earnings ladder are also in his sights with a plan to equalise the rates of capital gains and income tax.
His current pre-Budget stump speech talks about the need to nationalise utility companies and end “austerity.” He says “we need to stop being in hock to the bond markets” – a sentiment with about as much chance of success as his plan to talk Putin out of having nuclear weapons.
As Shirley Bassey sang, “I’ve seen it before and I’l see it again, just little bits of history repeating.”