Shops boarded up, rise in jobless, power cuts, strikes, soaring inflation, tax hikes, plummeting house prices, uncontrolled immigration, riots, monarchy under threat, kicked out of Nato, a country in meltdown and rules by the hard left… a chilling look at the future in Jeremy Corbyn’s Britain
A nation that went into the 2017 General Election with a growing economy enters another 1970s-style Winter of Discontent
IT’S a cold, damp evening in 2020 and Prime Minister Jeremy Bernard Corbyn is working late at his Downing Street desk.
The lamp illuminating the bust of Commandante Hugo Chavez flickers before extinguishing for good for the evening. The radiators are already turning cold.
PM Corbyn asks the switchboard to patch him through to the old No11 Downing Street, now renamed Karl Marx House.
Comrade John McDonnell, Chancellor of what he soon hopes will be Her former Majesty’s Exchequer, politely explains that the power workers have walked out — again.
Union chiefs at English Electricity — the new nationalised power company formed when the United Kingdom splintered last year — are insisting on a month-long Winterval break for all and “solidarity” mince pies for Belarusian striking miners.
The three-day working week is having a few teething problems, McDonnell insists, but full employment will be achieved in what he calls “our first Five-Year Plan”.
Corbyn lights a candle, glances at his glossy copy of this month’s Manhole Covers magazine, and carries on penning a communique to Vladimir Putin about the possibility of a defence pact.
(The PM smiles at the thought of that nice, unassuming union baron Len McCluskey taking time off from agitating for a General Strike to provide him with a draft to copy out).
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The new treaty with Russia is being sought after Britain had been expelled from Nato in 2019 shortly after giving up its Trident nuclear deterrent when Corbyn bridled at notions he might ever push the button.
President Trump had also taken exception to Corbyn’s offer to “reach out” to Hamas in Middle East peace talks, to be chaired by Secretary of State for a United Ireland Gerry Adams.
India — still receiving millions in our aid cash — has gratefully taken nuclear-free Britain’s permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
Peering outside into the gloom from a No10 window, Corbyn warily eyes a throng of protesters hunched around a burning brazier on Whitehall.
Some are wearing the old threadbare pin-striped suits they once wore in the Square Mile before 35 per cent corporation tax made the pips squeak.
Most bankers have long fled for Frankfurt and New York.
High tax-paying entrepreneurs have taken their investments offshore to avoid punitive tax.
In the once-vibrant City, the great glass edifices of the now nationalised banks and defunct blue-chip companies in what was once the world’s leading financial centre have been turned into community housing by Secretary of State Russell Brand.
Corbyn’s red revolution began on June 9, 2017, when a hung Parliament saw him enter coalition with Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP and the eight Lib Democrat MPs in a spirit of progressive togetherness.
All Nicola asked for, Corbyn remembers with warm contentment, was a referendum on an independent Scotland on her chosen date, all North Sea oil revenues, ten SNP Cabinet seats, a £20billion windfall for Scotland’s schools — and one of those nice tartan travel rugs for every Caledonian voter.
And good on the Scots for deciding to leave the imperialist Union, the PM thinks. The Welsh also deserved their hard-won freedom too.
The Yorkshire IndyRef, he imagines, will be a tougher battle. But at least the Shetlands decided to remain in a rump Britain.
Tim Farron is happy with a Cabinet seat for himself only, a bill to legalise cannabis and a second EU referendum in turn for the Lib Dems propping up Corbyn.
Those Brexit negotiations with the EU — symbolically held in the new Spanish territory of Gibraltar — were very stressful.
Corbyn shakes his head when he remembers just how angry Jean-Claude Juncker was — especially after that drinks reception.
They demanded so many billions from Britain to stay in the Single Market that Corbyn decided that we would jolly well stay in the EU with his backing from the coalition of the willing — new Greek bailout or no new Greek bailout.
Freedom of movement from Europe was never curtailed, with those wishing to come from further afield facing no Tory-style cap in numbers.
But now few people wanted to come to basket-case Britain.
Poverty-plagued young voters — who turned out for Corbyn in vast numbers on his poorly costed promises — have been hung out to dry.
Soaring inflation has dramatically increased the cost of the weekly shop, while rising interest rates mean many mortgage payers are defaulting and their homes repossessed.
The spectre of negative equity haunts the land as house prices plummet.
Small businesses cannot afford the rampant living wage annual increases and have gone to the wall.
With the Government entering a little mid-term turbulence, John McDonnell broke off from his morning digest of Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book to suggest his long-cherished dream of abolishing the monarchy.
McDonnell — already launching a bid to be the next PM — insists that when the IMF’s bailout kicks in and the Pound is devalued, all will be well.
Borrowing, he claims in an article with the now State-funded Guardian newspaper, is under control.
Yet the rapid rise in interest rates means Britain can barely make its interest payments.
Nationalised trains and buses have ground to a halt as strike-plagued Britain is plunged into darkness.
Home Secretary Diane Abbott — back in the fold after a remarkable recovery from the string of illnesses which plagued her for the entire 2017 election campaign — was quick to quell unrest on the streets from disgruntled voters.
Though only 2,000 of her promised 10,000 extra cops were ever hired.
A nation that went into the 2017 General Election with a growing economy has entered another 1970s-style Winter of Discontent of wasted lives and scorned talent.
Corbynland is once more the Sick Man of Europe.