It’s not been a good week for the Corbynistas of North London. First Lord Watts took aim at them for their taste in pastries during his maiden speech in the upper house. The Labour peer said that the party leadership should take less notice of ‘the London-centric hard left political class who sit around in their £1 million mansions eating their croissants at breakfast and seeking to lay the foundations for a socialist revolution’.
Now John Mann wants them to put their money where their mouth is. The Labour MP has written a blog post on his website today calling for Labour to charge party members with properties worth over £1m a ‘Labour wealth tax of £1,000 a year’. What’s more, Mann specifically names Corbyn’s Islington constituency as a problem area:
‘Of those who left the party over the years, it is mainly the middle class members who have recently re-joined. This is a big political problem: whilst the Labour Party has rapidly grown it is now conversely more distant from its traditional base – including in places like Islington.’
Mann says the tax — which would be aimed at the recently re-joined middle class members — would raise funds while also adopting socialist principles:
‘The Party has lost most of its bigger private donors and depleted trade union political funds will not be capable of again bridging this gap.
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