Jeremy Corbyn tells Donald Trump to “grow up”
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has told President-elect Donald Trump that he needs to "grow up" when it comes to his attitude to immigration and his campaign pledge to build a Wall between the US and Mexico.
"Donald Trump should grow up and recognise the American economy actually depends on migrant labour," said Corbyn, speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr show on Sunday morning.
"Last year they had a day without Mexicans and they certainly noticed it, and I think the treatment of Mexico by the United States, just as his absurd and abusive language towards Muslims, is something that has to be challenged and should be challenged."
"Trump decided to use the populist agenda – he blamed Muslims, he blamed Mexicans, he blamed women, he blamed anybody he could think of except the very corporate America, that in many ways he represents," he said.
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Asked why the votes of protest across Europe are going to the right and not to parties of the left said it was "time to move on" from New Labour agenda which was "essentially an incorporation of that free market liberal economic thinking, which actually processed de-industrialisation in Britain and to a lesser extent in Germany but to a greater extent in France".
He yesterday called Trump's triumph a "wake-up call to the world" likening his campaign to that of the Tories in the UK and accusing the Prime Minister Theresa May of stoking fears over immigration.
"We have no idea how Donald Trump proposes to 'make America great again', and Theresa May's Tories offer slogans, but no solutions, for most people in Britain," he said in a speech on Saturday.
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"We won't tackle the damage done by elite globalisation just by leaving the EU. We won't 'take back control' unless we take on the corporate vested interests that control our energy, our transport, and have infiltrated our public services.
"One thing is for sure: neither billionaire Donald Trump, nor the billionaire-backed Tories, have any interest in giving people back control, or reining in the predatory excesses of a globalised free-for-all," Corbyn continued.
He also said that he believed Bernie Sanders could have won the election, speaking on Sunday, despite the US senator's failure to win the Democratic nomination against Hillary Clinton.