Former Labour Leader Comes Up With Brutal Farage Nickname For New Corbyn-Led Party
Suspended Labour MP Zarah Sultana quit the party this week and announced she was starting up a new group with former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who was expelled from the party in 2024.
Corbyn released his own statement on Friday suggesting discussions around the new party 'are ongoing' – while promising 'change is coming'.
On Sky News' Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, the presenter asked Kinnock, now a Labour peer, 'how serious a threat' this new Corbyn-led group might be.
Kinnock noted they were already struggling to think up a name and so suggested one himself: 'Farage Assistance Group.'
Reform UK is currently leading in the polls as dissatisfaction with the Labour government rises.
He explained: 'The reality is, and everybody knows it, a division in the anti-conservative – capital C or small c – anti-right wing vote can only assist the parties of the right, the Conservatives especially now, and that is bad enough, and Farage's Reform party.
'The splintering, fragmentation offered by a new party of the left they say – I've got my doubts about that – of the left can only be of assistance to the enemies of Labour of the working class, people who have no means to sustain themselves, other than the sale of labour, by hand and by brain.
'It can be of benefit to the egos of those running the central party – and they haven't decide who should do that yet either!'
Kinnock, who led the opposition from 1983 to 1992, also said he does not think Starmer 'should worry himself too much' about Corbyn or Nigel Farage.
'He's the prime minister, he would be punching down,' he continued.
'But there are other people throughout the party who should be taking Corbyn and Reform very seriously.'
He warned there could be voter 'seepage' away from Labour unless these groups are addressed.
Kinnock went on to describe because Reform as the 'natural enemies of progressives'.
'You've just got to look at them and listen to them to know that they're following the classic pattern,' he said.
According to the Labour peer, the right-wingers have managed to first find and harvest division, then found someone to blame, and followed up with simplistic responses to complex problems.
#TrevorPhillips: How serious a threat do you think a Corbyn party is going to be? Lord Kinnock: I understand they're having a little difficulty over the name... I suggest they call themselves the Farage assistance group... #bbclaurakpic.twitter.com/PSCdiRG5Zn
— Haggis_UK 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 (@Haggis_UK) July 6, 2025
Labour MP Accuses Government Of Behaving Like Flat-Earthers Over Waspi Women
'I Strongly Disagree': Yvette Cooper Hits Back After Ex-Labour MP Attacks Government
Jeremy Corbyn 'To Set Up New Left-Wing Party' With Former Labour MP
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
22 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Which European countries have a wealth tax - and does it work?
As Sir Keir Starmer marks a year in Downing Street, a former Labour leader has suggested the prime minister should consider "asset taxes" for the wealthy as a way to regain support. Lord Neil Kinnock said that while the government is working towards "a series of really commendable and absolutely essential policies", they are "barely noticed" amid fury over cuts to the winter fuel payment, controversial welfare reforms and continuing with the two-child benefit cap. He said that a "cloud hangs over the accomplishments of the government... and people are not getting the message", with Labour trailing in the polls to Nigel Farage and Reform UK. Kinnock told Sky News' Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips programme that there are things the party could do that "would commend themselves to the great majority of the general public", including "asset taxes". "By going for an imposition of 2% on asset values above £10 million, say, which is a very big fortune, the government would be in a position to collect £10 billion or £11 billion," he said. Conservative shadow chancellor Sir Mel Stride said he thought a wealth tax would be "the worst thing to do" and opposed the idea of "piling further taxes on the wealth creators". One common argument against wealth taxes is that they drive wealthy people to other countries, meaning less tax collected, but how true is this? Here, Yahoo News takes a look at other countries in Europe with forms of a wealth tax to see what the impact has been. Norway has a net wealth tax, which is defined by American non-profit the Tax Foundation as "taxes on an individual's or family's net assets levied on an annual basis". In 2023, the Guardian reported that a record number of super-rich Norwegians were leaving the country after the maximum wealth tax was increased to 1.1%. Ole Gjems-Onstad, a professor emeritus at the Norwegian Business School, told the newspaper he estimated that those who left the country had a combined fortune of at least NOK 600bn (£43.6bn). In 2025, Alex Recouso, co-founder and chief executive of CitizenX, a private platform helping people find and fund places that will accept them as citizens, put the number at around £39.5bn. He told Australia's Daily Telegraph that this had resulted in a lost £435 million in yearly wealth tax revenue. Norway's municipal wealth tax rate is 0.525% and is calculated based on global assets exceeding a net threshold of NOK 1,760,000 (around £128,000) for single/not married taxpayers and NOK 3,520,000 (around £256,000) for spouses, according to PwC. The state wealth tax rate is 0.475% and is calculated based on assets exceeding a net capital tax basis of NOK 1,760,000 (around £128,035) for single/not married taxpayers and NOK 3,520,000 (around £256,000) for spouses. For net wealth in excess of NOK 20,700,000 (around £1.5 million), the rate is 0.575%. These levies combined brings the maximum wealth tax rate to 1.1%. While many rich Norwegians were reported to have moved to Switzerland, the Alpine country has a wealth tax system of its own. Its tax is levied annually at a regional level and accounts for around 3.8% of the state's annual income, according to the Financial Times. However, the newspaper points out that on the whole, tax in Switzerland is low, varying from canton-to-canton, with the top federal rate at just 11.5%. There is also no inheritance tax at a federal level, although some cantons have their own. This could explain why Switzerland has not had the same exodus of the super-rich as Norway. Spain taxes its residents on its worldwide assets valued at over €700,000 (around £604,000), according to Sublime Spain, a company that helps support people's work and life in the Mediterranean country. However, some autonomous regions including Catalonia have a lower level of €500,000, while some don't have any wealth tax. Percentages vary depending on how much you have in assets, but generally, the wealth tax in Spain is between 0.2% and 2.5%. Spain's central government also introduced a nationwide "solidarity wealth tax" in recent years, ranging from 1.7% to 3.5% on people with net assets exceeding €3 million (around £2.6 million). The Tax Justice Network, a British advocacy group, holds up Spain as a shining example of how wealth taxes can work. It suggests that other countries can raise $2.1 trillion a year by following the example of Spain's "featherlight" wealth tax on the richest 0.5% of households. Using the Spanish structure as a model for its study, the group suggests a tax rate of 1.7% is applied on wealth above the 0.5% threshold; a rate of 2.1% is applied wealth above the 0.1% threshold; and a rate of 3.5% is applied to wealth above the 0.05% threshold. But how well has Spain's wealth tax worked? A review by the Tax Foundation found that in 2022, wealth taxes represented 0.19% of GDP in Spain, compared to 1.19% of Switzerland's. They accounted for 0.51% of the former's total tax revenues and 4.35% of the latter's. In 2023, the new solidarity tax was reported to have raised €632 million in the year, the Budget Ministry said, compared to €1.8 billion raised from all taxes on large fortunes. While these figures are not to be sniffed at, they are a small proportion of the £280.5 billion in total tax revenue raised by Spain that year, according to Ceic Data. Raise taxes or this government will fail, Rachel Reeves's former top adviser warns (The Independent) Another tantrum from the Labour backbenches is inevitable (Sky News) Starmer endorses UN's high-tax manifesto (The Telegraph)
Yahoo
22 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Panel Of 2024 Labour Voters Name The 1 Turning Point They Began To Like Farage
A panel of 2024 Labour voters said they started to like Reform UK after watching its leader Nigel Farage on I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!. Back in late 2023 before he was elected to parliament, Farage caused a huge stir by appearing in the hit reality TV show. Even the programme's hosts Ant and Dec urged producers to take a break from having politicians as contestants. But, Farage still won over voters and ended up in third place. More than 18 months later, a panel of voters who backed Labour last July told pollsters that his appearance on the show marked the moment they started warming up to the MP for Clacton. In footage aired by the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, one voter told pollsters More in Common: 'I really like Reform. 'I didn't [like him], but it was I'm A Celeb... which turned my head for Nigel. 'I really saw a different side to him and I think he's very misunderstood.' 'He's more relatable to people, to the average person,' another woman said. 'Whereas some politicians at the present seem far removed, they're so in another world, because they are public school educated, they can't relate to the average person.' However, a different person did jump in at this point, saying: 'Nigel Farage was publicly educated, while Keir Starmer is working class but he does present that. 'So Nigel Farage puts on this image of being one of the people, but actually he went to private school.' Even so, some voters suggested they would fire Starmer for his 'disappointing' performance over the last year unless he starts to 'try harder'. Good Morning Britain host Susanna Reid also told the BBC that this conversation demonstrated how voters 'need to feel a material difference in their lives'. She noted that they are still struggling with food inflation and cost of living, so the 'government are getting this wrong'. 'Perhaps Sir Keir Starmer needs to go on I'm A Celebrity... or Strictly, in order for voters to know who he is,' Reid suggested. 'The words that kept coming out of their mouths were: I don't know who he is.' "I'm A Celebrity turned my head for Nigel [Farage]"Some focus group members think Reform UK's leader is different from "public school-educated" politicians, but another points out Nigel Farage was privately educated and Keir Starmer was not#BBCLauraKhttps:// — BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) July 6, 2025 The focus group's findings were published to mark the anniversary of Labour's landslide victory in the general election as political pundits look at how Starmer has fallen down in the polls ever since. Sky News had its own devastating way of portraying Labour's first year in office with some brutal word clouds, again from More in Common. The pollsters asked the public: 'In a word or two, what would you say has been Labour's biggest achievement in government?' The largest word by a healthy margin was 'nothing', although – in much smaller fonts – NHS, welfare, winter, election and Ukraine were all visible too. Minister Warns Labour Rebels That Watering Down Welfare Cuts Came 'At A Cost' Former Labour Leader Comes Up With Brutal Farage Nickname For New Corbyn-Led Party Labour MP Accuses Government Of Behaving Like Flat-Earthers Over Waspi Women
Yahoo
28 minutes ago
- Yahoo
German minister wants more firms eligible for electricity relief, FT says
BERLIN (Reuters) -German Economy Minister Katherina Reiche wants to make planned measures aimed at lowering companies' electricity costs more widely available than previously suggested, the Financial Times reported on Sunday, citing people with knowledge of the plan. Earlier this year, Germany's ruling coalition of conservatives and Social Democrats agreed to cut electricity tax to the European minimum for all consumers. But the Finance Ministry's framework budget for 2026 introduced last month limited the planned relief to industry, agriculture and forestry, excluding many companies and consumers, citing financial difficulties. Reiche said last month Germany would present a concrete concept for an industrial electricity price before the summer break and aimed to implement it by the end of the year. The FT said Reiche wants to expand the number of companies eligible for what it called electricity price subsidies to 2,200 from 350. The paper added that the people it cited estimated the cost at 4 billion euros ($4.7 billion) and the measure would fund up to half of firms' electricity costs over three years. Asked for comment by Reuters, the Economy Ministry said in a statement that under newly announced European Union rules up to around 2,200 "energy- and trade-intensive" companies could receive aid to cover up to half their power costs. "The (German) concept is currently being worked on," it added, declining to elaborate. The FT quoted the ministry as saying its scheme would aim to deliver "swift and reliable" aid to the chemical, glass and plastics industries, which have "a far-reaching impact on other sectors through the value chains". ($1 = 0.8490 euros) Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
