Much has been made of the Labour Manifesto taking the party supposedly back to the 70s and the ‘bad old days’. The Overton Window, recently popularised by Owen Jones, is the idea that there is a set of political ideas that the media, society and political parties see as acceptable to discuss. Everything outside of the window is taboo. The aim for the Left and Right is therefore to shift this window to allow previously taboo ideas to become acceptable. The Right has been remarkably successful at this, particularly with Brexit. So Corbyn’s manifesto is an attempt to move the Overton Window to the left by making seemingly out there ideas mainstream. Contrary to common opinion though, much of what Corbyn wants are policies that even the right wing Margaret Thatcher kept in place:

• No tuition fees

One of the most talked about pledges from Labour has been to abolish tuition fees for students in England. They are already free in Scotland and in much of Europe. The UK has the highest tuition fees in Europe and is an outlier in this regard.

As bad as things were under Thatcher, at least university was free. There were even maintenance grants. Tuition fees were introduced by Tony Blair’s government in 1998.

• Nationalisation of railways

A key pledge of Corbyn is to take railways back into public ownership. This shouldn’t be controversial since when the East Coast line was recently put into public ownership if functioned better and delivered a profit .

Railways remained publicly owned throughout Thatcher’s time in power and were only privatised by John Major in 1996.

• A publicly owned Royal Mail

It’s not particularly radical given countries like the US have a public postal service but Labour now plans to reverse the privatisation of Royal Mail.

This too survived Thatcher’s leadership, partly since she thought it was a bit bad form to sell off Her Majesty’s Post Office. It was privatised by the Tories and Lib Dems in 2013.

• A decent level of corporation tax

Corporation Tax is due under the Tories to sink to unprecedented levels of 16% by which will put the UK in the same tax haven ballpark as Ireland. Corbyn instead wants it raised to 26% , which would still be lower than the likes of Germany and Australia on 30%.

Although Thatcher was a big fan of big business she left office in 1990 with corporation tax at 35%.

Judging by the hysterical reaction to Labour’s manifesto in many ways our country has become more right wing than even during the Thatcher era. It is particularly concerning that this stuff isn’t taught in schools and so most people have a very limited frame of reference when it comes to examine policies. For me, what is particularly troubling is children growing up in an era where free tuition is presented like a pipe dream as it lies outside the Overton Window. Likewise, nationally own railways is the norm in lots of Western countries. These policies aren’t the end of days no matter how much some would like you to think so.