Labour would ban billionaires in the UK, one of Jeremy Corbyn's prominent supporters has said.

Lloyd Russell-Moyles, the MP for Brighton Kemptown, signalled a Corbyn government would “redistribute” the assets of the most wealthy.

Citing “tax-dodgers” and “bad landlords”, he told the Emma Barnett Show: “I don’t think anyone in this country should be a billionaire”.

“Those people who are the very one per cent of the top of this country -they are the people who are able to offshore their wealth out of this country.

“They are the people who pull the strings."

The radical stance appears to have the backing of the party leadership, with a Labour source saying last night: “Every billionaire is a policy failure.

“We will put wealth and power in the hands of the many not the few.”

It came as Mr Corbyn launched Labour’s election campaign along traditional class lines, seeing to set up the contest as a choice between the struggling and the well off.

Mr Corbyn used the launch to single out Britain's richest man, Jim Ratcliffe, as a "big polluter", as well as criticising the hedge fund manager Crispin Odey, who is a Tory donor.

Asked how Labour might enforce a no-billionaires policy, Mr Russell-Moyles said: “You do it by enabling everyone being very wealthy to be able to profit from gains of their work and their Labour, so profits are reinvested into communities, not just sucked up by one or two people.”