Key Corbyn ally: We’ll bring UK’s wealthy ‘elite’ to shuddering halt
JEREMY CORBYN l ast night vowed to slap a wealth tax on the rich to ‘bring the super elite to a shuddering halt’.
One of his senior aides accused Theresa May of supporting an ‘obscene and warped’ system which ‘screwed’ the poor.
A Labour government would bring in tough new laws to stop the rich ‘ pinching’ money from the less well-off, the aide said.
The provocative comments were made by Shadow Cabinet Office Minister Jon Trickett, one of Mr Corbyn’s closest aides. Tory MPs say they echo the Left-wing Labour government in the 1970s which famously vowed to ‘ squeeze the rich until the pips squeak’.
Mr Trickett said Labour would order wholesale renationalisation of major industries including rail, water and energy in the biggest redistribution of wealth in the UK for decades.
Painting a picture of a population on the brink of revolt, he said: ‘There is a restlessness, a mounting dissatisfaction. Too many communities are being screwed.’
Mrs May presided over a ‘warped system in which a super-rich elite runs rings round everyone else’, he added.
‘People have had enough of the elite pinching wealth from the pockets of working people.
‘Labour will overturn the rigged economy and bring to a shuddering halt the obscene power of the few thousand strong super-elite.’ Poor people had suffered while ‘ the great and the good, the rich and the powerful’ had cashed in on their backs, Mr Trickett said.
‘This cosy club has never batted an eyelid about the challenges facing communities. The economic gulf between them and the rest of England has grown so wide they no longer make decisions in the interests of the whole country.’
If Mr Corbynw on power, the privileged lifestyle of the rich would end, declared Mr Trickett, who was Gordon Brown’s parliamentary aide when he was Prime Minister.
The ex- plumber displayed his pride in his working-class credentials by going to work in his overalls on the day he became a Labour councillor.
‘ As Jeremy Corbyn recently remarked, “change is coming”,’ Mr Trickett said, but his outburst was condemned by a moderate Labour MP who asked not to be named.
‘There is a good case for increasing tax on some rich people, but not by using the language of class hatred,’ the MP said.
Mr Trickett told The Mail on Sunday: ‘This has nothing to do with class war – it is about sticking up for ordinary people.’