Corbyn conceded he wasn't quite sure where the cap should be set. “The point I'm trying to make . . . is that we have the worst levels of income disparity of most of the OECD countries in this country,” he continued, referring to the 35-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. “It's getting worse, and corporate taxation is a part of it.”

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For the leftist-leaning Corbyn, raising the idea of a maximum national wage may have seemed logical. He had already suggested a salary cap during the Labour Party's 2015 leadership contest, which he went on to win, to the surprise of many of his rivals. And with growing awareness of the problems caused by economic inequality in Britain and elsewhere, perhaps it seemed the right timing to bring it up again.

But Corbyn has been criticized by peers and allies alike for unrealistic policy goals and a confused leadership style. And during a round of interviews Tuesday that appeared to be an attempt to rebrand himself after prolonged Labour infighting, Corbyn struggled to offer a specific vision for what a national maximum wage would look like in Britain.

In an interview later Tuesday with Sky News, Corbyn suggested that any cap should be “somewhat higher” than 138,000 pounds a year ($168,000) — his own salary. “I think, certainly, the salaries that are paid to some footballers are simply ridiculous,” he said. “I think some of the salaries paid to very high-earning top executives of companies are utterly ridiculous.”

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Then in another interview again with the BBC, he admitted he wasn't totally sure how a salary limit should work in practice. “Either you do a cap or you look at the levels of disparity within organizations,” he told the BBC's political editor, Laura Kuenssberg.

Later still, he seemed to walk back the idea that he had favored a salary cap at all. Speaking during a question-and-answer session with journalists after a speech Tuesday afternoon, he told ITV's Robert Peston that he was most concerned about “ratio levels.” He added that it was “probably better to look at the ratio issue because that indeed would then encourage wage rises lower down and ensure a better sharing of the resources and the profits of any company or organization.”

The idea of attempting to limit high salaries is far from unheard of around the world — in fact, the concept holds some sway among economists who believe it would not only curb inequality but may help limit inflation. In 2013, Swiss voters rejected a national referendum that sought to limit executive pay to 12 times the wage of the firm's lowest earner. The year before, hard-left French presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon proposed a 100 percent tax rate on all salaries over 360,000 euros (around $380,000 nowadays).

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The idea has even been mooted in the tax-wary United States — most notably during World War II, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed a maximum income of $25,000. Though Congress ultimately balked at that idea, it did subsequently impose a record top tax rate of 94 percent on all income higher than $200,000.

However, actual implementations of these ideas are rare. The early Soviet Union experimented with maximum wages for Communist Party members before abandoning the idea. Cuba is one of the few modern countries to actually keep a nationwide maximum wage in place for decades, and critics say the effect on the economy shows.

Corbyn's comments led to a wide variety of criticism Tuesday. David Blanchflower, a former economics adviser to the Labour Party leader, suggested it was a “totally idiotic unworkable idea,” while Paul Nuttall, leader of the populist U.K. Independence Party, said it was the “politics of envy” that targeted Britain's financial workers.