Labour’s red greenery is designed to destroy capitalism

There you have it. There is no more camouflage or dissembling. The mask is off. John McDonnell’s address earlier this week to business leaders at the offices of UK Finance, the representative body for the banking and finance industry with a membership of more than 250 firms, was the manifesto of hard Marxist revolution delivered in the lair of the class enemy.

McDonnell reportedly spoke in a detached, dispassionate tone. It was the voice of the totally controlled commissar spelling out his post-revolutionary demands to the overthrown capitalist class. The hapless “former people” had already been warned: last month McDonnell told business CEOs: “I do believe actually that Marx has got a critical analysis of capitalism that we have to take into account.”

McDonnell’s June Theses are the blueprint for the British Revolution. Every revolution needs a pretext, a destabilizing factor to promote social upheaval, and Corbynista Labour has seized upon the climate change “crisis”. McDonnell, posing as the saviour of the world, announced plans to prevent money being invested in companies that do not meet Labour’s assessment of good climate practice. He also said Labour would delist from the Stock Exchange firms that had unsatisfactory green credentials.

No wonder some City critics denounced this as “financial totalitarianism”. Such insane policies would amount to the dismantling of the UK financial system. The timing, too, is impeccable. With many institutions and investors on the cusp in respect of maintaining a presence in Britain because of Brexit uncertainties, Marxist rigging of the financial system would catch the City in a perfect storm of withdrawal and disinvestment.

McDonnell has already invited the climate extremists from Extinction Rebellion to become advisers to Labour’s policymakers. He intends setting up a Sustainable Investment Board manned by the chancellor (himself), the business secretary and the governor of the Bank of England. “The Sustainable Investment Board will have responsibility for ensuring that the Bank of England is doing its bit to stop money flowing to projects that will kill the planet or destabilise our economy,” said McDonnell.

Destabilise the economy? Heaven forfend. Labour is already committed to an extravagant programme of renationalization of water, most of the energy sector and the railways that would cost £175bn, according to the CBI. This command economy would further be enforced, as revealed by The Sunday Times, by compelling the Office for Budget Responsibility to report to Parliament rather than the Treasury and to cost opposition party spending plans during a general election – a blatantly partisan exercise.

Labour hopes to be able to secure this totalitarian grip on the economy and society by invoking a hyped up “climate emergency”. From its origins as a political force in the 1990s the Grande Peur over global warming has been adopted as a leftist propaganda device. By ratcheting up this Project Fear exponentially the design is to shift societies from a peacetime to a war economy, with the state arrogating to itself unprecedented powers in the name of saving the planet from catastrophe.

Governments embraced climate alarmism early because of the scope it afforded for levying additional taxes and enhancing the outreach of the state. The Left, routed by the triumph of pro-market Thatcher/Reagan economics and the collapse of the Soviet Union under the weight of its sclerotic command economy, retreated into Frankfurt School Marxism which sought control of the culture rather than economic systems.

Gradually that Marxist émigration intérieure discovered the potential of climate politics to destabilize Western society and returned to the revolutionary offensive, camouflaged in green. McDonnell’s ultimatum this week to the financial services industry is the culmination of years of alarmist propaganda.

Is the climate changing? Yes, of course, it always has. Even in the short time span between the Mediaeval Warm Period and the inhospitable cold of the late 18th century when the Thames froze to a depth of six feet every winter, so that funfairs were held every year on the river – a time lapse representing a nanosecond in eco-history – England experienced significant temperature variations. Solar activity is the chief climate determinant. What are we supposed to do – turn the Sun down to mark 4?

Climate change demands a measured response, especially in coastal areas. In other parts of the world it may have more serious effects. But to describe this routine variation as a “crisis” is extravagant. Since taxpayers’ money is at stake, it is high time the British government conducted a proper, neutral investigation of the alleged phenomenon, involving scientists of every shade of opinion.

The UN’s IPCC has done the world a serious disservice by helping to politicize the issue. It has had to resile from many of its forecasts, discredited by subsequent events – or non-events. Climate alarmists determined a decade ago, for propaganda purposes, to declare that “the science is settled” and to refuse further debate – a departure from established scientific practice.

Scandals such as the discredited “hockey stick”, Al Gore’s dodgy ice-core samples and “Hide the decline” at the University of East Anglia did nothing to bolster the alarmist case. Applying the term “climate denier” to dissident scientists reflected an ideological rather than scientific motive among global warming campaigners. The movement has become disturbingly cultish. The spectacle of world leaders deferring to a 16-year-old schoolgirl who, uniquely, claims to be able to see CO2 with the naked eye smacks of the hysteria surrounding the Children’s Crusade.

We need an objective assessment before committing to any excessive measures. The predictions of global warming modelled in computers have not been reflected in surface temperatures. Complacency is not in order, but neither is panic. If the extreme prescriptions of climate alarmists are implemented, it will be the end of capitalist society, as John McDonnell knows well.

Yet those of his persuasion have been given a free pass by the people and institutions they seek to overthrow. The response to his Communist Manifesto from business leaders was a chorus of appeasement: “The shadow chancellor is right to be concerned about climate change and our sector has an important role to play…” “Clearly, more has to be done to tackle climate change…” And from the chief executive of UK Finance, Stephen Jones: “Achieving net zero carbon by 2050 is a difficult but critical target that we must all work together to address and as an industry we stand ready to respond.”

The Conservative government has already committed to that insane and pointless net zero carbon by 2050 target, at a cost of £1.5 trillion – a Danegeld to alarmists that would radically reduce living standards in this country.

Few at Westminster have had the courage to shrug off establishment groupthink and say: “This is a revolutionary Marxist project using a dubious and contested climate forecast as a pretext. We need to subject this theory to more critical investigation.”

For three decades a “socially liberal” political “centre-right” and financial establishment ignored the colonization of schools, universities, media and all other forums of influence by Marxist thinking. The culture wars were surrendered by default to the Marxist left. Now, that revitalized ideology is emerging from the cultural catacombs and marching on its traditional target, capitalism, whose immune system is non-existent. Be very afraid.

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