Saturday 12 September 2015

Open Letter to Jeremy Corbyn

Dear Jeremy

Congratulations on winning the Labour Leadership. I don't support Labour, I'll explain why in a moment but I do support authenticity and I believe you are Labours first authentic leader in decades. I'm sure you agree you have Ed Miliband to thank for your unexpected and meteoric rise. If you think about it though and I'm sure you have, immediately the power to elect the leader was handed to the party membership, an ultra left leader was inevitable.

Of course as we both also know, socialism does not work, it does not create a fairer less unequal society, it wrecks economies and steals personal freedom and aspiration. So it would be nice if you could explain why you intend to give it another try if you become Prime Minister. From my perspective I see an intelligent man with a genial if slightly eccentric persona who has spent his life indulging his student fantasies. I see someone who has become an expert at pointing out the many problems faced by our society.

What I don't see is any track record of success at anything. I see nothing to indicate that you have a single viable solution to make our society better and innumerable signs to say that if you get to power you will make it much worse. I'm not proposing to write a long treatise on this observation but I will give you one example applied to myself.

I am 58, I started with nothing and I have built businesses from scratch that currently employ around 130 people. If I carry on I think I can grow the business faster now and within the next five years employ over 1000 people, I can't guarantee it but I intend having a go. In your world I don't need the money and in mine it's not really about the money, I'm already pretty well off but if you take away the money I won't bother and it gets worse. Not only wont I bother to try to complete my plans if you become Prime Minister and introduce higher taxes, I will leave the country and take my wealth and creativity with me as well. Oh, I forgot to say that as an innovator, that over the years I have had a significant positive impact on the industry in which I work and that without me it would be a poorer less vibrant place.

That's enough about me, I hope you don't think me selfish or misguided but you probably do. If you are wondering why I want all that extra money when I have said I won't benefit from it I can give you an answer. Like most entrepreneurs, I want to rule, not to be ruled, I accept the necessity of government but I do so reluctantly and I want as much freedom as I can possibly get which means the freedom to do what I want to do with the money and wealth I create, not have government allow me to create it and then take it away because someone like you thinks they know better than someone like me.

So Jeremy, take my reaction and times it by the thousands of Doers out there. The Doers who have created all the countries success, the Doers who will do exactly the same thing as me, stop trying and leave, you can see how your attempt to create a fairer less unequal society will merely lead to a poorer less creative one. The only saving grace is that by being elected you have consigned your party to the scrap heap of history, if I'm wrong about that, well Marbella beckons I suppose. 

What makes me uncomfortable right now though, is that I don't trust the conservatives either and you have made them stronger bolder and less opposed. They are just the least worse party and not the best option, that was the coalition, or better still a National Government. Hopefully one day we will come up with a better system than the one we have at the moment but I won't hold my breath, after all unlike you I'm a pragmatist not an dreamer. In the mean time I will get in with my plans.

Once again Jeremy congratulations on your victory. 

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