It is a quarter century since Labour’s Michael Foot signed manifesto was rejected by the British people. An unelected Prime Minister is now going to impose some of those plans on the British economy. The socialist dreams so roundly rejected in 1983 sound eerily familiar:

… a National Investment Bank to put new resources from private institutions and from the government…. Exercise, through the Bank of England, much closer direct control over bank lending. Agreed development plans will be concluded with the banks and other financial institutions. Create a public bank… set up a Securities Commission to regulate the institutions and markets of the City… Set up a tripartite investment monitoring agency to advise trustees and encourage improvements in investment practices and strategies… We expect the major clearing banks to co operate with us fully on these reforms, in the national interest. However, should they fail to do so, we shall stand ready to take one or more of them into public ownership. This will not in any way affect the integrity of customers’ deposits.

The National Economic Council of the people’s plutocrats is straight out of that unreconstructed dirigiste mindset. This isn’t going to work.

The big lie that we will hear this morning is that taxpayer’s money will be “invested” and the government may even make a profit – like the Swedes did in the nineties. Except the Swedes didn’t make a profit, Swedish taxpayers lost billions. One bank out of over 114 Swedish banks refused the deal. SEB, Sweden’s largest bank controlled by the Wallenberg family, arranged a private sector recapitalisation and returned to profitability within a year. So could the UK banks. British taxpayers are going to get screwed like they have never been screwed before.