Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has delivered a reality check to Chancellor Rachel Reeves.

Jeremy Corbyn: Reeves “holding our country to ransom”

In the MP for Islington’s response to the spending review, he began:

Until this government stands up to the corporate elite holding our country to ransom, it will never bring about the change the British public deserves

Jeremy Corbyn went on to detail what standing up to the corporate elite would look like:

The government could, if it wanted to, tax the wealthiest in our society in order to end child poverty, fix the social care crisis, and fund a bold programme of public investment. It could end the rip-off of privatisation and finally bring water and energy and healthcare into public ownership. It could take on fossil fuel giants to kickstart a Green New Deal. Instead, today’s unambitious statement bakes in decades of inequality, depriving millions of people of the resources they need.

Rampant inequality is a key issue in the UK. And Reeves’ review does little to address it. According to Oxfam, 70% of the country own less wealth than the top 1% as of 2023. That is why so many are calling for a wealth tax, which would rebalance society by £22bn every year.

The privatisation of public utilities experiment has been a disaster. Whether it’s a lack of investment in critical infrastructure, asset stripping, across the board high rents on essentials, botched surgeries or eye watering fees for gas companies being ‘on standby’ (£12.5bn in ten years under the ‘capacity market’ scheme, plus price increases of 15000% under the ‘balancing mechanism’ scheme).

“Complete con”

Jeremy Corbyn continued:

As we speak, a quarter of a million people are homeless. For many of my constituents, the never-ending promise of “affordable housing” has been a complete con. The government must tell us: will its latest announcement result in proper social housing or subsidies for private developers? When will it get to the heart of the housing crisis and control rents?

Reeves remains silent on how many of the 1.5m new homes will actually be social housing. So far she has merely branded around 35,000 a year of them as ‘affordable’. Short of stopping treating housing like an asset altogether, rent controls could go very far in circumventing the housing crisis.

For more than 70 years, between WWI and the late 1980s, the UK had a system of rent control. It’s a policy that could drive down poverty and put more pounds in peoples’ pockets – as Labour has repeatedly pledged to do.

In many European countries there is some control over rents. In Sweden, tenant unions and landlords negotiate rents based on average earnings, inflation, and costs. In the UK, we do not have such a procedure and under 45s alone wasted £56.2bn in passive income for landlords in 2024.

“Wake up”, says Jeremy Corbyn

The independent MP then turned to foreign policy:

Instead, the government continues to find endless money for weapons of war. As conflict rages around the world, the government needs to wake up, end its complicity in genocide and stop fuelling the wars of today and tomorrow.

According to Oxfam, the UK government has licensed £500 million worth of arms to Israel since 2015. That’s while it oversees an apartheid regime and exterminates Palestinian civilians indiscriminately.

It’s too bad the British public snoozed on a Jeremy Corbyn premiership.

Featured image via the Canary

By James Wright

This post was originally published on Canary.