Carwyn – Wales’ voice heard ‘loud and clear’ in Corbyn’s manifesto

WALES’ voice has been heard “loud and clear” in the Labour Party’s General Election manifesto, First Minister Carwyn Jones said last night.

He said the meeting of the party’s shadow cabinet and National Executive Committee, which unanimously approved the document, was “extremely positive and constructive”.

A leaked copy of Mr Corbyn’s manifesto pledges to nationalise key industries and reverse years of austerity.

Welsh Labour – which will also be publishing its own manifesto, as it has done since devolution – had earlier appeared to distance itself from the document.

“Welsh Labour’s manifesto will be distinct in its purpose, bold in its ambition, and proudly Welsh Labour throughout,” Mr Jones said.

“Crucially, strong bonds with our Labour colleagues have meant that Wales’ voice has also been heard loud and clear in the UK manifesto.

“This shows Labour at its best, campaigning as one on those areas of shared passion and responsibility, while enabling policies that best serve our country to flourish.”

The comments came just three days after Labour launched its General Election campaign in Wales at a 45-minute rally during which Mr Corbyn’s name was not mentioned once.

Yesterday, Mr Corbyn said his party’s manifesto will offer a vision of a Britain in which “nobody is ignored, nobody is forgotten, nobody is left behind”.

He was speaking after a meeting of the party’s shadow cabinet and national executive committee unanimously approved the document, believed to set out plans to nationalise key industries and reverse years of austerity.

Labour’s launch plans were thrown into disarray by the leak of a draft version of the document to national newspapers.

Prime Minister Theresa May said the leaked draft suggested Labour wanted to take Britain “back to the past”.

But Mr Corbyn predicted the policies would prove “very popular” and said they amounted to “an offer that will transform the lives of many people in our society and ensure that we have a government in Britain on June 8 that will work for the many, not the few, and give everyone in our society a decent opportunity and a decent chance, so nobody is ignored, nobody is forgotten and nobody is left behind.”

According to the leaked document obtained by the Daily Mirror and Telegraph, a Corbyn government would:

Renationalise railways as each private franchise expires, with fares frozen and guards put back on driver-only trains;

Establish publicly-owned bus companies;

Return Royal Mail to public ownership following the coalition government’s “historic mistake” of selling it off; and

Take energy “back into public ownership” by setting up a rival to the existing Big Six private firms.

To pay for the policy pledges, Labour has already announced plans to hike corporation tax to 26% by 2022, bringing in an extra £20bn for the Exchequer, and indicated people earning more than