Jeremy Corbyn will say the chancellor, Philip Hammond, is right to call the Labour party an “existential challenge to our economic model” as he pledges to lead a government that will overturn the economic status quo.

Corbyn will tell the Co-operative party conference on Saturday that Labour would forge a fresh consensus for a modern economy, which would allow digital platforms and technological advancement such as automation to flourish in ways that empowered workers.



Responding to Hammond’s warning in his speech at this month’s Conservative conference, Corbyn will say the chancellor is “absolutely right” to say that Labour is threatening to destroy the current economic model, adding that the current system “allows homelessness to double, 4 million children to live in poverty and over a million older people not getting the care they need”.

In the speech, Corbyn will also warn of the dangers of a “no deal” Brexit, saying the future high-investment economy that Labour envisages is contingent on Britain reaching a sensible agreement with the EU.



“No deal is the worst possible deal,” he will say. “It would leave us with World Trade Organisation tariffs and restrictions instead of the full access to European markets we need.

“Theresa May’s cabinet of chaos is risking a jobs meltdown across Britain. A powerful faction of the Conservatives want a no-deal outcome because they think they can use it to turn our economy into a deregulated tax haven. We must not let them.”



Earlier this week, the Labour leader said he was was extremely concerned about the lack of progress made in the Brexit talks and the possibility that the UK could crash out of the EU with no deal.

Corbyn will use his first major speech since his party’s conference to talk about how his leadership has overseen a transformation of the Labour party, using mass participation and new technology platforms, and suggest the same could be applied to the British economy and business.

“The top-down model of organisation – whether in politics, the media or in business – is being challenged and is breaking down,” he will say.

Corbyn will say Labour is not opposed to technological advancement, but digital giants such as Uber and Deliveroo have built their success not on their technological advantage, but by “establishing a monopoly in their marketplaces and using that to drive wages and conditions down”.

“Imagine an Uber run co-operatively by their drivers, collectively controlling their futures, agreeing their own pay and conditions, with profits shared or re-invested,” he will say.

“The biggest obstacle to this is not technological, but a rigged economic system that favours wealth extractors, not wealth creators.”



Corbyn will cite evidence from the party’s new report on alternative models of ownership, which he said will examine how the benefits of the digital age and the “rise of the robots” can benefit both workers and customers, through a shorter working week and by putting the ownership and control of the robots in the hands of those who work with them.

“We don’t claim to have all the answers, but are thinking radically about how we can use the power of new technology in the coming decades to make our economy work for us all,” he will say.

On Friday, shadow Cabinet Office minister Jon Trickett criticised the “hypocrisy” of the Conservatives’ attempts to criticise Labour’s record on the economy, after former chancellor George Osborne told an audience in London he did not believe Labour could have prevented the financial crash in 2008.

Osborne, who is now the editor of the Evening Standard newspaper, said he had “questions about some of the decisions taken in 2007-08” but he thought the then prime minister Gordon Brown and his chancellor Alistair Darling “broadly speaking … did what was necessary in a very difficult situation”.

Osborne said the “public finances were not as strong as they could have been after 10 years of growth … but did Gordon Brown cause the sub-prime crisis in America? No.”

Trickett said the former chancellor’s comments were a “cynical ploy” given the scale of the Tory attacks on Labour’s economic record during Osborne and David Cameron’s time in office.

Osborne has previously called the crash “Labour’s great recession” and in 2008 Cameron said the crisis “highlighted just how mistaken Labour’s economic policy has been”.

Trickett said Osborne had “finally admitted that Labour did not cause the global financial crisis and that our spending plans were right and, in the process, he has completely shredded any remaining Tory economic credibility”.