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  1. Politics
13 January 2017

Jeremy Corbyn attacks “the people who run Britain“ – but who exactly is he talking about?

The Labour leader will criticise those who led the country into foreign wars. 

By Julia Rampen

Jeremy Corbyn is to pledge that Labour will make a “complete break” with a “rigged system” that serves the elites.

Speaking to the Fabian Society on Saturday, the Labour leader is expected to say: “Last year’s global political earthquake didn’t just come out of the blue. There are many of us who had felt the tremors growing for years. The people who run Britain have been taking our country for a ride.”

He will propose public takeovers of failing care homes and a long-term funding plan for the NHS. 

But here’s an interesting Islington dinner party question. When he talks about a “complete break” from “the people who run Britain”, who is he talking about?

Corbyn says these people have “slashed taxes on the richest”, and cut pay and services for the rest. 

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Sounds like the Tories. But here are some other things about these people that gets Corbyn’s goat.

He says they’ve “put the country at risk by taking us into disastrous foreign wars”. That could, of course, be David Cameron’s Libya adventure. But that is hardly as controversial as Labour Prime Ministers Tony Blair’s decision to join the invasion of Iraq.

Well, we always knew Corbyn opposed Blair and Iraq.

But what about some of the other things the “people who run Britain” did?

Corbyn criticises an elite who have “rigged the economy and business rules” and “piled up debt”. He might be talking about the Coalition government, or the Tory government – or the last Labour government, which bailed out the banks.

 

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