Corbyn hits the rich
He vows to take back the people’s wealth... and says Marx had good ideas
JEREMY corbyn will today pledge to take back the nation’s wealth in a ‘reckoning’ with the rich.
Deploying the rhetoric of the hard Left, he will launch Labour’s election campaign with an aggressive pitch to bring down those ‘ripping off workers and consumers’.
He will vow to ‘ruin’ the conservative Party and transform Britain into a country ‘for the many, not the few’.
Yesterday he described Karl Marx as a ‘great economist’ and backed his shadow chancellor John McDonnell over his suggestion that there was ‘a lot to learn’ from his most famous work, Das capital.
Rebel former MP Simon Danczuk quit Labour – accusing the shadow chancellor of ‘celebrating the reign of Joseph Stalin’.
And Tory candidate James cleverly said: ‘it’s clear these two Marx brothers are determined to unleash their hero’s dangerous ideas on Britain, sending taxes soaring and destroying jobs.’
Mr corbyn will make his radical speech this morning. He will pledge a ‘jobs-first Brexit, a Brexit that safeguards the future of Britain’s vital industries, a Brexit that paves the way to a genuinely fairer society and an upgraded economy’.
‘The economy is rigged in favour of the rich and powerful,’ he will say.
‘When Labour wins there will be a reckoning for those who thought they could get away with asset stripping our industry, crashing our economy through their greed and ripping off workers and consumers.
‘Don’t wake on up on June 9 to see celebrations from the tax cheats, the press barons, the greedy bankers, Philip Green, the Southern Rail directors and crooked financiers that take our wealth, who have got away with it because the party they own, the conservative Party, has won.
‘We have four weeks to ruin their party. We have four weeks to take our wealth back.
‘We have four weeks to win and transform Britain for the many not the few.’
At least ten hard-Left groups – including the communist Party of Britain – have backed Mr corbyn’s fight to enter Downing Street.
earlier this week, the shadow chancellor was criticised by the Tories after saying there is ‘a lot to learn’ from Marx’s Das Kapital. Last night it emerged that both he and Mr corbyn had spoken at the communist conference in 2007, where extreme Left-wingers discussed ‘developments in Marxism’ and ‘the crimes of capitalism’.
Yesterday Mr corbyn said he had read both Marx and the works of free-market pioneer Adam Smith.
‘All great economists influence all of our thinking,’ he said. ‘Yes, i have read some of Adam Smith, i have read some of Karl Marx, i have looked at the words of (David) Ricardo, i have looked at many, many others.
‘ i don’t consider myself the world’s greatest intellectual, but you learn from everybody, don’t close your mind to the thoughts of others – that way, we’re all better informed.’
Mr corbyn and Mr McDonnell attended the ‘communist University of Britain’ at Ruskin House in croydon, South London, in 2007 attended by Marxist parties from Hungary, Pakistan and Sudan. According to an article in the Morning Star, the event was set up to ‘challenge the crimes of capitalism and imperialism, outline the choice between a global future or globalised disaster, discuss developments in Marxism and consider the relations between reforms, revolutions and socialism in the 21st century’.
The weekend meeting began ‘with a celebration of the 90th anniversary of the Russian Revolution’ and a ‘celebration of the life of che Guevara’.
During his speech Mr McDonnell claimed there was a need to establish ‘new power bases’ in Labour – a comment which will be seen as a forerunner to Momentum.
Yesterday Mr Danczuk, who was suspended by Labour and told he could not be its Rochdale candidate for sending explicit texts, said: ‘ With frontbench… people, such as John McDonnell, continually obsessing about Karl Marx, the benefits of communism and celebrating the reign of Joseph Stalin, i feel the Labour Party has totally lost touch with its social democratic values and, indeed, with reality in 21st-century Britain.’
‘Revolutions and socialism’