Corbyn still backs a pay cap – but not for super-rich footballers

JEREMY Corbyn was ridiculed yesterday for proposing a salary cap for chief executives – but saying footballers paid six-figure weekly sums should be exempt.

The Labour leader was also accused of presiding over fresh chaos surrounding the party’s immigration policy as he repeatedly refused to say he would end the free movement of EU workers.

He was said to be ‘all over the place’ after bemoaning the salary gap between the best and worst paid.

Mr Corbyn said a firm’s bestpaid employees should get no more than 20 times the salary of those at the bottom end.

But he said this should not include Premier League footballers, who earn as much as £290,000 a week.

Arsenal fan Mr Corbyn told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show: ‘Well, footballers are not CEOs usually of their companies.

‘So I think we have to look at it in that form of structure. But also footballers, whilst they are paid ludicrous sums of money, which I suppose we all pay for through our tickets, in reality they’re employees for quite a short time with those clubs.’

Mr Corbyn also refused to accept that levels of EU migration to Britain were too high.

And, on ITV’s Peston on Sunday, Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry said: ‘We’re not going to die in a ditch about [free movement of people], it’s up for negotiation, but Labour’s principle has always been that the economy is the most important thing.’

Mr Corbyn’s interview followed a disastrous re-launch of his leadership last week, when he made U-turns over free movement and imposing a blanket cap on pay in both the public and private sector. Yesterday, he blamed media hostility for many of his woes and called for a statutory right of reply.

He quoted figures that suggested 80 per cent of the coverage of Labour in the media was ‘actively hostile’.

He also suggested he would go into the 2020 election calling for the House of Lords to be abolished and replaced with an elected second chamber. But despite the party’s chaos, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge On Sunday programme he thought Labour’s week had been ‘pretty good’.

However, union baron Len McCluskey predicted the Tories would still be the largest party after the next General Election. He said Mr Corbyn’s best hope would be a coalition with the SNP and Lib Dems.

Lib Dem leader Tim Farron said: ‘Labour are all over the place. Corbyn’s re-launch has only shown again how poor an opposition they are. He has muddled his way from policy position to policy position.

‘ No one knows what the Labour Party position actually is on the issues of the day. They are failing to be an opposition.’

Tory MP Nus Ghani, who sits on the Commons’ home affairs select committee, said: ‘Once again, under repeated ques- tioning, Jeremy Corbyn refused to say that immigration into Britain is too high. And his Shadow Foreign Secretary also said that getting control of the numbers coming here from Europe isn’t a priority.

‘Labour don’t want to get control of our borders and are completely out of touch with ordinary working people.’

Mr Corbyn denied he will be ‘toast’ if Labour fails to hold on in two by- elections triggered by resignations of his MPs.

The party is facing a strong challenge from Ukip in Stokeon-Trent Central, where Tristram Hunt is standing down to become the director of the V&A Museum.

The Tories are favourite to unseat Labour in Copeland, where Jamie Reed has quit to take up a position at the Sellafield nuclear power plant.