Labour today pledges a massive new £150billion fund based in the north of England to fix the “human emergency” under the Tories.
John McDonnell will unveil a Social Transformation Fund to “upgrade and expand our schools, hospitals, care homes and council houses” over five years.
And the Shadow Chancellor will vow to move a “powerful section of the Treasury” to the north to oversee how the cash – raised through a big rise in borrowing – is spent.
Mr McDonnell will make the pledge in Liverpool where he and Jeremy Corbyn will unveil Labour’s general election campaign bus brandished with the slogan ‘it’s time for real change’.
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Today will be dominated by the economy with 35 days left to the election – as Tory Chancellor Sajid Javid brands Corbyn and McDonnell the “anti-vaxxers of economic policy” in a speech less than an hour away.
The Shadow Chancellor will say: “This is where the investment is needed and this is where those decisions on investment need to be made on the ground. Power is coming home. Back to the people.”
He will add: “Spent over the first five years of our Labour government, the Social Transformation Fund will begin the urgent task of repairing our social fabric that the Tories have torn apart.
“£150bn to replace, upgrade and expand our schools, hospitals, care homes and council houses. To deal with the human emergency which the Tories have created, alongside the climate emergency.”
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And he will pledge “an irreversible shift in the centre of gravity” in politics from London to the north and regions.
The new Social Transformation Fund comes on top of a £250bn Green Transformation Fund, already announced, to be spent over 10 years.
Together they bring the total pledged so far as part of an overarching National Transformation Fund to £400bn – roughly doubling previously-committed borrowing for the fund in the first years of a Labour government.
Labour said the huge investment, overseen by a unit of the Treasury based in the north, will be funded by “issuing government long-dated bonds” and spent on capital projects that “raise the productive capacity” of the economy.
The GTF would be spent on retrofitting homes to be energy efficient, offshore wind farms and Crossrail for the North among other projects yet to the announced.
Some of the GTF would also be spent through Local Transformation Funds which would be overseen by nine civil service boards in each of the nine regions of England. Each board would hold a General Assembly for the public to ask questions twice a year.
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Meanwhile the STF would include capital investment for schools and hospitals with elements to be announced before the election.
The £400bn total includes money sent to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland under the Barnett Formula, Labour said.
It comes after Jeremy Corbyn told an audience in Telford on Wednesday that unlike the Tories he was not “born to rule”.
In a thinly-veiled attack on Eton-educated Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg , he added: “I don’t pursue that kind of politics at all – the parlour game, the debating society game”.
Jeremy Corbyn vowed to clamp down on “clever wheezes” used to avoid paying tax as part of a wider plan to redistribute wealth.
He let rip on factcats after Boris Johnson compared him to Stalin for his attacks on the wealthy in an inflammatory newspaper column.
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Asked how he felt about billionaires, Mr Corbyn said: “My personal views on billionaires is that they’ve obviously got a great deal of money therefore they’re in a very strong position to pay a lot more tax.
“So our tax plans will affect the richest five percent of our society.
“We will be chasing down tax evasion, tax avoidance and tax havens because at the end of the day if you’re doing some very clever wheeze which somehow or other is avoiding your levels of taxation you should be paying, go further away, what happens then?
“You’ve got an underfunded school, hospital and public services as a whole. You’ve got a moral obligation to pay your taxes. However rich, powerful and famous you are. One day you might have a heart-attack. Then you’re going to need the public services.”
He said he would be a “very different kind of prime minister” who “only seeks power in order to share power”.
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Meanwhile Boris Johnson officially launched the Tory election campaign in a blustering, lie-filled speech in Downing Street to deflect from 24 hours of disaster.
The Tory leader finally kicked off the formal campaign after a week of phony war – dragging the Queen into the debate as he filmed a video on the way to see her Majesty.
But despite trying to distract attention by comparing Jeremy Corbyn to Stalin, he started on the back foot with a string of scandals in his own party.
Minutes before his speech, the PM’s Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns resigned from the Cabinet over claims he lied about when he knew about a collapsed rape trial.
Meanwhile Tories were monstered for releasing a doctored campaign video, launching a failed bid to use the civil service to cost Labour policies, keeping a candidate who said Benefits Street stars should be “put down”, and attempting to justify Jacob Rees-Mogg’s shameful comments on Grenfell.
Speaking on the steps of No10 36 days before polling day, Mr Johnson urged Brits to “come with us” and back the Tories to get his “oven-ready” Brexit deal through Parliament.
