Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has published his party’s manifesto as the 8 June general election is coming up fast. In the manifesto, Labour have pledged £50 billion’s worth of promises for taxes and spending. He’s basically going to get corporate fatcats to share the wealth, which will bring some of their ridiculous levels of fortune to the underpaid public sector workers, childcare, education, the NHS, and social care, all far better uses for the money than their country club memberships.
Corbyn’s shadow cabinet joined his side as the manifesto was released (and quickly analysed by the Conservative Party for any small holes they could brutally attack in a straw-grasping smear campaign) at an appearance in Bradford. He also made promises to nationalise the Royal Mail, the water industry, the country’s railways, and some of the energy industry, which led to cheers and applause.
The manifesto was joined by a spending document
The Labour Party’s manifesto outlining what their government would do and live by if they get elected onto Downing Street next month was joined in publication alongside a second document that outlined the finances and spending a Labour government would be operating with, including taxes, budgetary issues, and costings.
In this document, Corbyn says the party might be pulling together £48.6 billion to spend elsewhere in the government through increasing taxes to the rich, with an extra £20 billion or so coming in by undoing the cuts to corporation taxes and bringing the fatcats’ money back in.
This continues Corbyn’s crusade against the rich that has been the cornerstone of his General Election campaign, neglecting the votes of the one percent but gaining that of the ninety-nine percent (if naysayers do the maths, they’ll realise this shouldn’t be a problem). He’ll be bringing in yet another £6.4 billion on top of that with his big policy to upend the income tax system, bringing in a 45p rate for those earning more than £80,000, and the bracket for earners of over £123,000 raising to 50p.
An estimated 800,000 people will be yanked into the 45p bracket, while an additional 500,000 will be brought up into the new 50p bracket.
Corbyn’s plan is simple: taking the rich down a notch
Corbyn’s big plans for tax won’t affect the little people. According to the Labour leader himself, the party are “ruling out rises on VAT and national insurance and on income tax” for everyone in the country bar “the richest 5% of high earners.” 95% of people will not be affected by this; only the richest of the rich. It’s high time they gave a bit back, and Corbyn’s going to do that for us. He also promises that around “5.7 million people earning less than the living wage” will have their hourly rate increased to £10 by 2020.
The nationalisation proposals are not budgeted for in the Labour Party’s expenditure document, but Corbyn has justified this by saying that it’s not a government expenditure, but rather a series of business investments that will reap capital rewards in the long run (or even if they don’t, it’s still technically a business investment, so it’s not required to be a part of his manifesto). He also added that the plans for the rail and water industries would probably be “neutral” in terms of finances.
Corbyn also took the opportunity to clear up some of the rumours that have been floating around that Labour’s plan is to take Britain politically back to the 1970s (which, by the way, wouldn’t be all that bad at all, it was a good time, but whatever).
He fired back at the Tories (without naming them, and instead referring to them as “the other major party contesting this election”) by saying that they are “really forward-looking.” But he was being sarcastic, explaining that “they are going to bring back foxhunting and grammar schools.” Zing!