Sorry eurochick, I don't want you to feel attacked. I just joined the thread around the time you posted about corporation tax and your comment stood out to me as being fairly typical of the things people say about Labour.
I apologize in advance for using your post as an example (and there are no doubt numerous other posts in a similar vein on this thread that would provoke a similar thought process in me).
You said in your post that one of the reasons you would not vote Labour is due to "whopping tax increases on corporations". You said that this information is in their manifesto. So I looked it up in the manifesto which I happened to be looking at anyway and it turns out that there is no mention of a desire to implement huge increases on corporate tax (and indeed there is a desire to lower it for small businesses).
So then you linked to a Telegraph article about these "whopping increases". I admit I didn't read it because I didn't want to sign up to the Telegraph but myself and other posters pointed out that the Telegraph is known to be biased against Labour and an unreliable source (which IMO is outrageous for such a mainstream and serious publication).
Then you were kind enough to link to the Adam Smith publication which one would hope would be responsible and neutral. So I read the article and it doesn't say that Labour plans unreasonable or whopping increases (it questions whether the increases would translate to the increase in revenue that Labour predict which seems a fair point to me).
What the article says about the increase is this :
The Labour party has proposed increasing corporation tax to 26%, from its current rate of 19%, and in contrast to the government’s proposed reduction to 17%.
That would leave the UK with a tax rate one and a half times the level the government is proposing, putting us around the middle of European corporate tax rates rather than near the bottom (although still the lowest in the G7).
The reason I am pointing all of this out is not to get at you personally. It's because I think our exchange on this thread illustrates the influence of the press bias really well. People like to make out that Labour are currently ultra left wing to the point of a vindictive type of communism and / or that they are financially incompetent and that they wish to implement an ultra left wing economic policy to the detriment of the economy for ideological reasons.
But reality does not bear this out - as we can see from the quote I posted from your link. Having the lowest corporation tax in the G7 and a middling rate compared to the rest of Europe is not "whopping increases on corporation tax", nor is it particularly left wing.
It's a shame such falsehoods are perpetuted about Labour, Corbyn and McDonnell because they have some really solid, sensible, fair policies which are absolutely typical of our European counterparts.
But they will no doubt never get to see the light of day as the English voting public is currently dominanted by right wing eurosceptics who mock socialism and vote for right wing ultra capitalist populism. And our mainstream media encourages them.
It's a sad state of affairs.