Jeremy Corbyn is doing a great job as leader – of Ukip

Economic nationalism is seemingly policy that Corbyn, Ukip and Donald Trump have in common, but buying British can mean poorer services and worse value for money

Almost without anyone noticing, the Labour Party seems to be turning itself into the party of economic nationalism. My evidence? The innocuous sounding “Build it Britain” campaign, launched by Jeremy Corbyn who, it is fair to say, speaks for his party with some authority these days. The pity is, the party he could be speaking for is Ukip.

Labour’s latest economic idea is to ensure that public money should be spent on British products and British workers and British companies. That, I’m afraid, is protectionism wrapped up in a Union Jack. It is, Corbyn sincerely believes, how British manufacturing can be revived after Brexit, when foreign-based companies such as Honda, BMW and Nissan will be reviewing their commitment to invest in a country outside the biggest market for their UK-made products – the EU customs union and single market.

Perhaps Corbyn thinks they’ll be persuaded to stay if he insists the British public sector buy the stuff they make here and will no longer be able to shift in Europe; if so, we will be buying an awful lot of cars for the public sector. Maybe he could just give them away to the needy; Vote Labour and get a free Mini Cooper! Or, get a new Nissan Qashqai on the NHS.

This outbreak of economic nationalism is a very big clue as to why Corbyn has always been lukewarm about the EU, if not committed to withdrawal – the longstanding belief that a Labour government should be able to subsidise businesses and support jobs without some Brussels bureaucrat or judge telling it that it cannot. Those with long memories will recall that was the approach of Tony Benn, the long-time leader of the Labour left and political mentor of Corbyn.

So what's wrong with the idea?

Well, let’s take the renationalised Royal Mail that Corbyn promises (I heard him say so for myself at the Labour Live festival recently, and it went down pretty well with the crowd waiting for Clean Bandit, and who will actually soon be getting Clean Brexit. Boom boom).

Once the posts have been returned to the public sector, the secretary of state for business (or whatever it will be called by then) will be keeping an eye on its procurement policies. A new van for Postman Pat will be high on the agenda. After extensive examination of their financing, their reliability, running costs, depreciation, driver comfort and suitability for Post Office customisation, the bosses at the Royal Mail recommend buying Peugeot vans built in Spain. Oh no you don't, says the minister, presumably Rebecca Long-Bailey. Under our manifesto commitment to buy British, you’re going to have to buy Vauxhall vans, made in Luton, albeit by the same French-based group. But, squeal the mail folk, they’re not as good, they’re too big, they’re more expensive. Tough, says Ms Long-Bailey. I have the British people behind me. Tell Pat and his black and white cat that his new Vivaro is on the way.

This is what life used to be like. When the British still had a domestically controlled motor industry, the Royal Mail, the police, British Rail, the local authorities and other public agencies were the only people, pretty much, who would purchase the products of the nationalised British Leyland Motor Corporation. The obsolescent Sherpa van was shunned by much of the private sector and small businesses because it was nowhere near as good for the job as a Ford Transit, which happened also to be made in Britain. The general point, though, is this; buying British can mean worse value for money for taxpayers and poorer services and products for consumers. This is not some ideological rant or neo-liberal fixation; it is simply common sense, and a recollection of what life was like in this country when the state ran businesses. Badly.

Economic nationalism is wrong, but it is seemingly policy that Corbyn, Ukip and Donald Trump have in common. It represents a belief that producer interests are more important than consumer interests, and, often enough, taxpayer interests. It is not free trade. It will leave uncompetitive British enterprises, public and private, being propped by tax revenues paid by the successful ones, which is precisely the wrong way round. We should not, even if it hurts, be buying British where French, Spanish, Indian or Chinese products or services or contractors promise superior value, or are better suited to consumer tastes.

Corbyn says: “For the last 40 years, a magical kind of thinking has dominated the way Britain is run. We’ve been told that it’s good – advanced even – for our country to manufacture less and less and instead rely on cheap labour from abroad to produce imports, while we focus on the City of London and the finance sector.”

I’d only suggest to him that there is actually nothing wrong with relying on imports manufactured with cheap labour, because that cheap labour, as he disparagingly calls it, comprises millions of people in places such as China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam who have been lifted out of poverty in recent decades. They make shirts, shoes, cars, steel and, well, almost anything better than we do. Globalisation has thus reduced global inequality – not socialism. Fact.

Where I grew up, in Leicester, there still stands the Co-operative wholesale Society shoe factory, built in around 1890, and which was, in those days, the biggest in the world. Most of this handsome structure survives and is now flats. I well remember us visiting the factory shop at the back, where they offered excellent value. The biggest shoe factory in the world is now to be found, I think, in Dongguan, in China. I am sorry about that, sentimentally, but know that it make more sense to get our footwear from East Asia than the East Midlands. Maybe Corbyn doesn’t want to put the clock back on that – but what does he want us to make here that is made by Chinese workers today? How will he do that, apart from public procurement? And what will the World Trade Organisation and the Chinese say about that? Why is it socialist to put a Chinese worker out of a job?

Much the same goes for railway trains, which Corbyn wants to build here, even if the Japanese or the Germans are better at it. Perhaps he’d want NHS uniforms made in the UK rather than China. Maybe our schools should ensure that their textbooks are printed in this country rather than abroad, if it squeezes their budgets.

Can you imagine going shopping with Corbyn? He’d make you have the Wensleydale rather than the Brie; the English sparkling wine rather than the Prosecco; English apples rather than the South African ones. I wonder how much British stuff is in the Corbyn larder. Or where his washing machine, smartphone or bicycle is made. Maybe he wants to start a British Banana Corporation (BBC) with a plantation in sunny Cornwall, so we don’t have to rely on the ones form West Africa and the Caribbean, where the wages are so low. Those guys can find something else to do. Is that the ultimate destination of “Corbynomics”?

I think we should be told.

After Brexit, if it happens, the market will determine where Britain’s comparative advantage lies, where the jobs will be created, where the investment will go, and how we will pay for it. In the cold climate that we will encounter outside the EU's protected markets, we will find life more difficult, and harsher than anyone has yet owned up to – on the Corbynite left or the Rees-Mogg right, or in Ukip for that matter. The one thing we cannot afford is a double whammy – finding ourselves outside the EU but lumbered with a protectionist, and statist Labour government trying to keep living standards high as the economy fails to generate the exports and funds to support them. Brexit may well be ruinous, at least in the short term, but it will be made much, much worse if we go down the road of economic nationalism.