The left is always dishonest. Everything they do is tactical in pursuit of power. I used to be among them and for much of my career worked to defeat them, mostly in dealing with the union movement, many of whose leaders were as deranged as Jeremy Corbyn, in the same way as pretty well the whole of the phalanx of Democratic Party candidates for president. These people are only viable because for most people it is virtually unbelievable that people can be so openly deceitful, nor can they believe that such great intellectuals who populate the opinion pages of our newspapers, or run national broadcasting operations like the ABC, are actually as ignorant as they really are.

Do you ever see Venezuela in the news? Who, besides people like me, ever bring it up as the cautionary tale it is? For myself, I never take leaders on the left as actually speaking their true beliefs, but only what they believe will actually gull enough people into giving them power. If being kind to refugees, high taxation on the wealthy, free stuff for everyone, is what works, that is what they’ll say. If you do not already know the left’s attitude to World War II from September 1939, until June 1941, which then just changed in an instant when the Soviet Union was attacked, then you really ought to look into it. It is how the left always operates. Remember Kevin Rudd the economic conservative?

No leftist government has any idea how to run an economy, or maintain a free society. Put them into power and they will ruin you. And like Maduro in Venezuela, or Lenin/Stalin in Russia, or Mao in China, once they are in and democratic options are finally suppressed, you will never get them out. Which leads me to this, which is from Powerline reporting on a poll conducted by The Sun in the UK, reporting what the members of the Labour Party in Britain believe. A complete disaster, but even as insane as all of this is, they only put it up because they believe it will bring them political power. And they believe it because some wildly large proportion of the people who live in our democracies actually believe these kinds of policies are optimal. Add in saving us from climate change and you can see where we are at.

If, like me, you have wondered how a left-wing loony like Jeremy Corbyn can remain in control of the Labour Party, this poll, reported in the Sun, suggests the answer: Labour is a party of left-wing loonies.

Marxist zealots have seized control at every level since Jeremy Corbyn became leader — and are poisoning the debate with their hardline views.

For example: only a small minority of Labourites believe that a country has any right to control its own borders.

Labourites are overwhelmingly ashamed to be British:

Members of the party don’t think Labour has an anti-Semitism problem. Most believe that idea is a creation of the press, or of Corbyn’s political enemies. There could be a reason for this: a majority of Labourites say that if Brexit goes ahead, the U.K. should do no trade deals with Israel (Russia fares considerably better), and, in a not unrelated finding, most Labourites are tolerant of terrorism. In fact, only 29% blame terrorism on terrorists:

It goes on and on. An overwhelming majority think a general strike would be a terrific way to bring down a Tory government. Any Tory government. And by 51% to 40%, Labour party members, in this survey, want the government to “take broader control of broadcast media.” Of course they do.

It is a frightening picture. Labour must never again be permitted to govern the U.K. One wonders, though, how different a comparable poll of American Democrats would be.

This is the kind of brew we found ourselves dealing with at our own election in May. I’m not so sure that Malcolm didn’t have pretty well the same attitudes. We in the West are at an ideological death’s door but we haven’t gone through, at least not yet.