Top Jeremy Corbyn ally vows to 'bring super elite to a shuddering halt'

Liz Bates

A senior Labour frontbencher and top ally of Jeremy Corbyn will vow to bring the richest Brits to a “shuddering halt” in an all-out attack on financial inequality.



Shadow Cabinet Office Minister Jon Trickett will blast the “deliberately rigged economic and political system” and lay out plans to disperse “the obscene” concentration of wealth and power.

He will also attack the attack the Sunday Times Rich List and accuse the Conservatives of deliberately gifting tax cuts “worth tens of billions of pounds” to their “billionaire friends”.

Speaking at an event hosted by the IPPR think tank, Mr Trickett will say: "We have seen power snatched away from communities and handed over to the establishment of a few thousand super elite who have profited from the last 40 years of neo-liberal economics.

“You know the people: the great and the good, the rich and the powerful. They are becoming increasingly intertwined. The political class, who leave politics and go onto the boards of corporations that they supposedly regulated a few months before, or end up editing the newspapers that are supposed to hold power to account.

“This cosy club has never batted an eyelid about the challenges facing communities. The economic, social and cultural gulf between them and the rest of the England has grown so wide they no longer make decisions in the interests of the whole country."

He will add: “The Sunday Times Rich List exposes a warped system in which a super-rich elite run rings around the rest of us.

“With over half the UK’s richest hedge fund managers donating to the Conservative party, as long as they are in Government nothing will change.

“The Tories’ billionaire friends give them money, and are gifted tax cuts worth tens of billions of pounds, paid for off the back of the rest of us.

“People have had enough of years of the elite pinching wealth from the pockets of ordinary working people.

“Labour will overturn the rigged economy that the Tories are obsessed with protecting.”

Mr Trickett will say communities have been "held back" and will lay out Labour plans to hike taxes for the richest 5%, create regional development banks and nationalise key industries.

“Failing economics together with the hoarding and centralisation of power has done untold damage to people across England," he will argue.

“Most people think that if you put something into the community, if you work hard and play by the rules then you ought to be able to get on in life. It's not much to expect is it?

“But too many communities are being screwed by a system which doesn’t work for them."