LETTER from Mark Langabeer, Newton Abbot Labour member
Doing the rounds on social media, there is a picture of over two hundred people queuing at a soup kitchen in Glasgow during the recent freezing weather. A guy tweeted, “how did we allow this to happen?”, but in my opinion, it’s clearly the consequence of the Tory austerity that has cut benefits and essential services to those who need them most.
However, there is another Britain, and it was highlighted last week on a Channel 4 programme called Britain’s most expensive homes. Apparently, the go-to estate agents for the very wealthy is Sotheby’s Realty. According to this programme there is a boom in expensive property sales.
Due to the Covid crisis, the wealthiest are leaving London for the countryside. One home was on sale for £40m, and the brokers were confident of finding a buyer. One broker described a home worth over £5m as “not that expensive”!
The gulf between Britain’s richest and poorest is greater now than anytime in living memory. Labour must inscribe on its banner a wealth tax and there needs to be social housing built for all who need them.
Labour must be committed to introduce a public works programme to prevent mass unemployment and introduce a minimum wage of £ 15 an hour.
How would this be paid for? My answer is simple: bring the major companies into public ownership and use the profits to transform the lives of the many, rather than the few.
