Hardline Shadow Chancellor who'd hammer middle-class

JEREMY Corbyn’s Shadow Chancellor has set out how he would hit the middle classes with a 60p tax rate and ban firms paying high wages.

John McDonnell’s hard-Left manifesto includes an extra ‘wealth tax’ on the richest 10 per cent and a levy on land values.

If he ever gets into Number 11, he would use these to introduce rent controls and a £10-anhour minimum wage. The working week would be cut to 35 hours – down from the current maximum of 48, the Labour veteran said.

And rather than cutting welfare, he would dramatically increase it – introducing new ‘living welfare benefits’ and a ‘living pension’. In addition, new laws would prevent companies from paying directors more than 20 times the salary of their lowest-paid staff.

The hard-Left veteran laid out his vision in a 2012 essay, little noticed at the time, entitled ‘The radical alternative to austerity’.

But the Shadow Chancellor does not appear to have moved on in his thinking, telling a rally on Sunday that Britain’s economy was a ‘kleptocracy’ and calling for rent curbs and a living wage. Writing in the document three years ago, the MP called for ‘redistributive measures

HILARY Benn, one of Jeremy Corbyn’s most senior team members, refused to publicly endorse John McDonnell as shadow chancellor yesterday.

The Shadow Foreign Secretary was asked repeatedly whether he welcomed the socialist firebrand’s promotion to the important Treasury brief. Mr Benn simply told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that Mr McDonnell had to ‘win the trust of voters’. He added: ‘I respect the choice that Jeremy has made as leader.’

Shadow Scottish Secretary Ian Murray also seemed reluctant to back Mr McDonnell, telling the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire show: ‘Not seeing a woman in that job is disappointing.’

He also urged Mr Corbyn to back the UK staying in the EU and Britain’s Nato membership. Mr Murray told Radio Five: ‘The vast majority are pro-Nato – the vast majority of the public are too.’ which will raise the funds we need from those most able to pay and who have profited most out of the boom years’.

He said the redistribution could be achieved through a wealth tax on the richest 10 per cent, a ‘Robin Hood’ levy on financial transactions and a land value tax. ‘Progressive’ income tax of 60 per cent would be slapped on incomes above £100,000 and a clampdown would be launched on tax evasion and avoidance that costs £95billion a year.

In a separate document, Mr McDonnell calls for 70 per cent tax on incomes above £1million. Cash would go towards a ‘mass public housing building and renovation programme’, universal childcare and a new ‘national caring service’ to deliver social care.

He called for investment in green energy, an end to bonuses and ‘limiting high salaries to no more than 20 times the lowest paid in any company or organisation’.

There should also be not just a living wage, but a ‘living pension’ and ‘living welfare benefits’, he said. Mr McDonnell wrote: ‘There is an alternative to austerity. The problem is that this wealth and these resources are held in the hands of too few people...’

Speaking at a TUC rally in Brighton on Sunday, Mr McDonnell said Britain was under a ‘kleptocracy’ – a form of government which steals from the people.

He also called bankers ‘jokers’, and was applauded when he told delegates the solution to the housing crisis was to build council homes again – and ‘control the rents’.

He added: ‘People... are choosing at the end of the week, some of them, whether they eat or whether their children eat. The solution is simple – we will introduce a real living wage. £10 an hour is what we need.’