WE’RE COMING AFTER YOU!

May fights for ordinary Britons with ultimatum to tax dodging giants, rip-off energy firms and rogue bosses

rip-off firms and tax-dodging multinationals were yesterday warned by Theresa May: ‘We’re coming after you.’

In one of the most radical speeches by a Tory leader in decades, she laid into the rogue businesses inflicting ‘unfairness and injustice’ on ordinary Britons.

The Prime Minister said the Brexit vote on June 23 represented a quiet revolution against a system that served only the wealthy elite.

And she vowed to use the full power of the state to deliver reform – threatening intervention in the free market to confront vested interests and right wrongs.

Mrs May identified a list of her prime targets. It covered energy firms, fat-cat bosses and tax-avoiding corporations such as Google. She gave them the stern ultimatum: ‘Change has got to come. It doesn’t matter to me who you are – we’re coming after you.’

The Prime Minister also hinted at help for savers who have been punished by the Bank of England’s strategy of printing money and cutting interest rates.

Mrs May ended her speech to the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham with the message: ‘Come with me and together let’s seize the day.’ She also:

Claimed the centre ground of British politics and declared Labour the new Nasty Party;

Pledged to defy the education establishment and open new grammar schools;

Ruled out compromise on reclaiming full control of borders and laws in Brexit talks;

Savaged ‘activist left-wing human rights

lawyers’ for hounding members of the armed forces.

Breaking with decades of Tory ideology on state intervention, Mrs May said the Government ‘must be prepared to tackle the unfairness and injustice that divides us, so that we may build a new united Britain, rooted in the centre ground.’

She said the June 23 referendum showed the country was crying out for radical action to take on the elites. ‘It was a vote not just to change Britain’s relationship with the European Union, but to call for a change in the way our country works – and the people for whom it works – forever,’ she said.

‘If we don’t respond – if we don’t take this opportunity to deliver the change people want – resentments will grow. Divisions will become entrenched. And that would be a disaster for Britain.’

Mrs May listed a series of powerful, high-profile targets for intervention.

She said: ‘If you’re a boss who earns a fortune but doesn’t look after your staff; an international company that treats tax laws as an optional extra; a household name that refuses to work with the authorities even to fight terrorism; a director who takes out massive dividends while knowing that the company pension is about to go bust. I’m putting you on warning. This can’t go on any more.’

Those in her sights are understood to include Google and Apple, who have been accused of deliberately shirking their tax responsibilities in the UK. Facebook has been repeatedly criticised over the presence of Islamic State propaganda and other terrorist material on its website.

Sir Philip Green, the Topshop tycoon, has been strongly censured for his role in the collapse of BHS, which has left thousands fearing for

‘Life doesn’t seem fair’

their pensions. The list of targets extends to tax accountants and advisers, house builders who sit on plots of land and BT Openreach, which has been savaged for its slow progress delivering rural broadband.

Mrs May said: ‘It’s just not right, for example, that half of people living in rural areas, and so many small businesses, can’t get a decent broadband connection.

‘It’s just not right that two thirds of energy customers are stuck on the most expensive tariffs. And it’s just not right that the housing market continues to fail working people either.’

Aides said the Prime Minister would spell out specific proposals in the ‘coming weeks and months’. The only known plan is for firms to be forced to put workers on company boards. On broadband, one option could be ending Openreach’s monopoly.

Mrs May insisted the party would still ‘applaud success’, but she added: ‘We also value something else: the spirit of citizenship. That spirit that means you do as others do, and pay your fair share of tax. But today, too many people in positions of power behave as though they have more in common with international elites than with the people down the road, the people they employ, the people they pass in the street.

‘If you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere. You don’t understand what the very word citizenship means.’

Mrs May also hit back at criticism from business of her plan to crack down on immigration, which includes plans to make firms publicly declare how many foreign nationals they employ. She declared: ‘If you’re one of those people who lost their job, who stayed in work but on reduced hours, took a pay cut as household bills rocketed, or – and I know a lot of people don’t like to admit this – some- one who finds themselves out of work or on lower wages because of low-skilled immigration, life simply doesn’t seem fair.

‘It feels like your dreams have been sacrificed in the service of others.’ Mrs May praised David Cameron, who was not present, for changing the Tory party and making it electable again.

But he was excluded from a list of four ex-PMs Mrs May listed as her inspiration: Disraeli, Churchill, Attlee and Thatcher. As the Mail revealed yesterday, Mrs May tore into the liberal elite for dismissing fears about immigration.

Business groups gave a cautious response to the speech.

Carolyn Fairbairn of the CBI said: ‘Government must build on the great things so many firms are already doing and not impose approaches that look good on paper, but don’t make a difference in practice.

‘Placing workers or consumers on boards can be a solution for some firms, but may not be the only or even best way of changing company culture.’

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