In the novel Catch 22, one of the central characters is an entrepreneurial war profiteer by the name of Milo Minderbinder.
Caught swindling his fellow countrymen, Milo likes to evoke the “historic right of free men to pay as much as they have to for the things they need in order to survive”.
When Milo’s profiteering results in the price of food in the army mess hall climbing so high that the enlisted men can no longer afford to eat, Milo valiantly cites the alternative. And since he is an unapologetic champion of the free-market, the alternative is for the enlisted men to exercise their freedom of choice and “choose” starvation.
If ‘typical Labour left policies’ had ever (bizarrely) turned up on ITV’s Family Fortunes, I’d place a pretty safe bet that ‘nationalisation’ would top the poll. But there is something deeply ironic about this, because nationalisation – as conceived and implemented by post-war Labour governments – had very little to do with the Labour left.