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Jeremy Corbyn has warned business leaders he wants to hike their taxes - before campaigning in an iconic Tory stronghold.

The super-confident Labour leader told industry chiefs yesterday he was ready to slap higher corporation levies on their profits in a bid to fund education.

Mr Corbyn later swept into two Tory marginal seats including Iain Duncan Smith’s north London constituency.

He rallied activists in Chingford and Wood Green, where former Conservative leader Mr Duncan Smith has a fragile 2,438 majority.

Tory bruiser Norman Tebbit held Chingford for 18 years, including when he was party chairman under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.

Labour's leader also dropped in on Hendon, where Tory Matthew Offord has a majority of just 1,072, and tried his hand at bricklaying at a local college.

The confident campaigning came amid growing reports of left-wing Labour members threatening deselection while Labour flies high in the polls, with a record eight-point lead from YouGov today.

(Image: PA) (Image: PA)

Mr Corbyn raised his business tax plans at the British Chambers of Commerce, telling executives: “We think it is the right thing to do.”

BCC director general Adam Marshall claimed: “Unless we have the best possible environment here in the UK to do business, we can’t make much of a success of Brexit , can we?”

His members “would not be too keen” on a rate rise, he told Mr Corbyn.

But the Labour boss joked: “I thought you would have welcomed it.”

The Tories have slashed corporation tax to 19% and plan to cut it to 17% by 2020.

But Mr Corbyn warned business leaders: “In 2010 corporation tax was at 28%, it’s now come down quite a lot.

“We would put it back up to 26% because we think that’s a figure that will be able to fund what we are trying to achieve, mainly in education.

(Image: AFP)

“If we don’t do that and continue with the idea that students have to go massively into debt in order to become graduates, that people cannot go into nursing because of the loss of the nurse bursary unless they have got private means to do it an so on, we end up with a less skilled, less qualified workforce.

“If we are prepared as a public to invest in it then we end up with qualified workforce.”

He denied firms would flee Britain and move to France, where President Emmanuel Macron is planning to slash corporate taxes.

Mr Corbyn said: “I understand the argument about businesses relocating elsewhere ... but I think we should be prepared to raise it to what would still be a lower level than the average of the G7, as a way of investing in our future.

“I don’t see a future for this country as being a low tax haven on the shores of Europe.”

The party boss also renewed his suggestion that Labour is a government-in-waiting as he aims to topple Theresa May.