As the founder of the Phones4U company and now a billionaire, I am one of this group regarded with contempt by Corbyn. Yet I had a far less privileged upbringing than him, writes JOHN CAUDWELL (left with girlfriend Modesta Vžesniauskaitė)

Determined in his pursuit of an ideological war on wealth, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn likes to portray successful business people as a greedy, privileged elite bent on grinding down the poor.

This is a grotesque caricature viciously fuelled by the politics of envy. It is a dangerous conviction, too. For not only does it promote division in our society, it also undermines enterprise — the lifeblood of the economy — and denies the value of social mobility.

This week, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell confirmed that Labour would tax the rich — large rises for all those earning over £80,000 — to fund its misguided policies taken straight from the Seventies playbook.

As he described plans to introduce a 32-hour working week — which would bring many British businesses grinding to a halt — Corbyn’s would-be Marxist Chancellor teased that Labour would ask ‘the top 5 per cent [of earners] . . . to pay a little bit more’ to help fund it.

And he warned that multinational technology companies, many of which invest eye-watering sums in Britain’s future, will be heavily taxed in order to fund the unwarranted nationalisation of Britain’s broadband network.

It was yet more proof that a Labour government under Corbyn’s direction would do everything in its power to quash aspiration, stymie enterprise and drive the nation’s wealth-creators abroad.

Indeed, it’s a foolproof way to deter future investment into the UK, damaging the standard of living for the average British person.

My story demonstrates how misguided Labour’s targeting of the wealthy is.

As the founder of the Phones4U company and now a billionaire, I am one of this group regarded with contempt by Corbyn. Yet I had a far less privileged upbringing than him.

Determined in his pursuit of an ideological war on wealth, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn (pictured) likes to portray successful business people as a greedy, privileged elite bent on grinding down the poor, writes JOHN CAUDWELL

Corbyn was born into a middle-class household, grew up in a Shropshire manor house and was educated at grammar school. By the standards of most people, he had it all.

My father worked as a technician, while my mother had a job in a pottery firm. Our lifestyle was frugal, our terraced home in Stoke-on-Trent a modest one.

I dropped out of school at 17, becoming a nightclub doorman before being taken on by the Michelin tyre company as an apprentice engineer.

When I married 40 years ago, unable to afford our own home, we lived in a 14 ft-long caravan parked on the lawn of my mother’s property.

This early experience combined with my later success imbued in me a strong sense of the value of hard work and the need in this country to cherish the entrepreneurial spirit.

And so I observe with despair how Corbyn’s Labour party fails to recognise that without flourishing enterprise, there would be no sustainable job creation, no economic growth and no prosperity.

There would be a socialist wasteland of mass poverty and unemployment, the very problems that Corbyn claims he wants to tackle.

That is not to say that we should be complacent about the divide between the rich and the poor, which I agree is far too wide.

As I hope I have shown in my own charitable work, I firmly believe that the affluent have a duty to help those less fortunate than themselves.

This week, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell (pictured) confirmed that Labour would tax the rich — large rises for all those earning over £80,000

Though Corbyn and McDonnell dress up their crusade in the rhetoric of compassion and equality, what they are really engaged in is the politics of spite and resentment. And it is placing the livelihoods of Britain’s underprivileged in peril.

Bashing the rich will do nothing to achieve their goal of creating a fairer Britain. On the contrary, it will lead to a more impoverished, fractured land.

Without the income from the rich, there would be far less funding for the NHS, schools and benefits.

The wealthiest one per cent of taxpayers in Britain provide 27 per cent of all our income tax revenue. I estimate that I have paid £330 million in taxes over the past decade. It is painful amount but I understand it is my fair share. Even without these financial benefits, Labour’s blinkered antipathy to rich people forgets that aspiration is something that should be nurtured rather than derided. For it is only by incentivising ambition that we build the dynamic, competitive economy where innovation and creativity are celebrated.

In the Seventies, the beleaguered Labour government imposed effective income tax rates of 98 per cent, prompting a colossal drain of talent from these shores and turning our country into the sick man of Europe.

More recently, former socialist French president Francois Hollande introduced a special wealth tax, which led to an economically disastrous exodus of the rich.

And yet Labour clings on to its reckless programme. A Corbyn premiership would herald massive income tax hikes for anyone on a salary above £80,000.

In the same vein, nationalisation will return with a vengeance, starting with the railways and public utilities.

I’m tired of reading about businesses’ alleged concerns about Brexit. Our nation will be fine beyond the EU’s jurisdiction. What businesses, the rich and the poor should really fear is the advent of a Corbyn premiership. That would be the true historic calamity, writes JOHN CAUDWELL (pictured)

The Confederation of British Industry puts the financial bill for nationalisation at £200 billion but the economic cost could be even higher in the loss of competition and destruction of free enterprise.

Rather than lift people out of poverty, Corbyn would actually consign poor people to an even poorer life. It is no wonder that many business leaders I’ve spoken to now contemplate leaving the country if a Corbyn government were to come to power. Any successful society knows that retaining the wealthy is a key ingredient to prosperity. An exodus is a sign of economic failure. And once the rich leave, they are unlikely to come back.

Though it pains me to say it, even I would have to consider joining the other business exiles if Corbyn really began to enact his programme. I love Britain and it would be distressing to leave, but I could no longer live in a country where entrepreneurship is openly despised by the state, businesses are emasculated and spiteful envy is whipped up against the successful.

It is a strange irony that Corbyn is calling for a new anti-capitalist dark age just as communist China is embracing capitalist competition. Corbyn’s lieutenant Lloyd Russell-Moyle tells us that Labour doesn’t want any billionaires in Britain, yet China is on track to have the most billionaires in the world. Could there be a better demonstration of how warped Labour’s values have become?

It is time for voters to wake up to this backwards logic.

I’m tired of reading about businesses’ alleged concerns about Brexit. Our nation will be fine beyond the EU’s jurisdiction.

What businesses, the rich and the poor should really fear is the advent of a Corbyn premiership. That would be the true historic calamity.