If Corbyn has ‘deserted' the working class, what exactly have the Tories been doing for the past seven years?

Over her time in government, May has consistently voted against the interests of those from lower socioeconomic groups

Theresa May, speaks to party supporters in front of the Conservative party's general election campaign "battle bus" at an airfield north of Newcastle (Getty)

Apparently, according to Theresa May, ensuring workplace security, giving workers a living wage and making sure they aren’t undercut by labour from abroad, providing free education, reducing inequality and providing jobs through public funding are all betrayals of “proud and patriotic working class people across Britain”. She claims that Jeremy Corbyn has “deserted” the working class people of Britain.

As this week’s leaked Labour manifesto and the promises within it (listed above) illustrate, Corbyn hasn’t abandoned the working class. The only people who have consistently betrayed the working classes are the Tories.

Despite preaching “a different kind of Conservatism” and a desire to stand up for the “ordinary worker”, time and time again, Tory rhetoric is divorced from the reality of their record and agenda. How can May, who has repeatedly put the interests of working class people at the bottom of the pile, purport to be their champion?

Over her time in government, May has consistently voted against the interests of those from lower socioeconomic groups.

The Conservative’s austerity agenda has left more and more people without the ability to put food on the table for their family. When May came into government in 2010, the Trussell Trust handed out 40,000 food parcels. Now, in 2017, it's well over 1 million. Most of these people haven't had their benefits sanctioned. They’re not homeless or ill; they simply aren't being paid enough to eat. While May told Andrew Marr last week that there are “complex” reasons that people eat at food banks, the cause seems simple enough. Despite rhetoric championing “hardworking families” from May and her cabinet colleagues, in-work poverty has soared to record levels, with a report this week showing that a third of renters have to borrow money to keep a roof over their heads. These are the facts: in Britain, in 2017, many people are unable to provide food or a home for their families on the wages they earn.

This situation is perpetuated by the continued growth of zero hour contracts which keep 1.7million in uncertainty about their work. Yet May still refuses to acknowledge that her party has created the environment for such hardship to exist.

Despite a clear electoral strategy to target traditionally Labour voting working class constituencies, May and the Tories have done little in practice to help this demographic. Although we have yet to see a full manifesto, all the signs suggest that they will continue to undermine the interests of this group if re-elected in June.

In May’s speech on Brexit in January she outlined her vision to turn Britain into a tax haven for multinational tax-avoiding companies, a threat repeated by her Chancellor Philip Hammond, along with an unwavering pursuit of a hard Brexit doomed to destroy the once budding manufacturing sector, whilst raising inflation and lowering living standards. This might benefit the richest in society, but would signal disaster for Britain’s working classes, many of whom are already struggling with housing, the cost of living, and unscrupulous employers.

Jeremy Corbyn has produced a manifesto that looks to provide true security and stability to the working class, where it matters most - in their homes and workplaces. The Tories have shown that they continue to hold working class people in the contempt we have come to expect. But it is the disingenuous attempt to appeal to those whom the Tories have, for the last seven years, viciously victimised that is so virulent. We must not let them get away with it.