Corbyn: why should we have to pay for a military if we don't agree with war? Photo: EPA  Except, our military does a lot more than just fight wars. Leaving aside our overseas commitments that don’t relate to combat: helping with crises such as Ebola in the developing world, fighting the international drugs trade, there are the domestic issues that, time and time again, our Armed Forces step in to help with.  What happens, for example, when next spring or autumn, we have more floods? And the Government is forced, once again, to rope in the Army to help out with sandbagging homes and rescuing people when the police are too box-ticking to do it? “Sorry sir, before I carry you out of your rapidly-flooding property, can I just ask whether you opted out of funding us? You did? I’m sorry then, I won’t be able to rescue you after all.”  Or how about when firefighters next go on strike and the military is rolled out to dust down a Green Goddess?. Sorry, nope, can’t remove you from the burning building because you said you didn’t want to pay. Or even, when the next terrorist atrocity happens, as it inevitably will at some point, and there is immediate clamouring to respond militarily? Can’t do it I’m afraid. Not enough people to fight. Not enough money to fund them.  Royal Marines assisting with the flood effort in Somerset  Carry Corbyn’s “stark staring bonkers” theory to its extreme, and things get even more ridiculous. If you don’t have children, for example, or don’t intend to have them, then why should you have to pay for state-funded education, or child tax credits? What about if you shun the NHS and use BUPA instead? Surely you should be mitigated from having to pay for the health service, if you don’t use it.  The list is potentially endless: transport (don’t agree with cars; nasty polluting things, everybody should ride bicycles instead); prisons (locking people up doesn’t work); immigration and border control (we should let them all in; migrants are good for the economy).  In fact, once you start thinking it through, it could be argued that Corbyn’s statement is actually support for an entirely privatised system of society, with government services bought a la carte like phone contracts or TV bundles: a tax-lite avoidance setup worthy of the most bloated of payment-avoiding plutocrats. Corbyn, it turns out, is secretly a libertarian anarchist. Who knew?
If you're going to let taxpayers opt out of funding the Army, then why not   other things too?