Zarah Sultana faced a grilling by the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg over her vision to “nationalise the entire economy”. The co-founder of Your Party alongside Jeremy Corbyn was asked on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg what that would mean for small businesses across the country.
The Left-wing MP said: “The status quo in this country is broken. We are the second most unequal country in the OECD, second to the US. We have rampant inequality so things have to fundamentally change. When I talk about nationalising our economy I’m talking about the commanding heights of our economy – the utilities, energy, rail, buses, telecoms, mail – which are wildly popular with the public.
“But we also have to look at other forms of democratic ownership in our economy. That means workers’ cooperatives, community land trusts, public banking, a national wealth fund that workers and communities control.”
Pressed on whether a hairdresser or corner shop would be run by a workers’ committee, she added: “If you look at polling the British public actually support a system where workers make the decisions in their workplace.”
The BBC presenter then cut in and said she was asking how it would work rather than polling.
Ms Sultana went on: “If you’ve a coffee shop and you’ve got a small workplace a democratic form of ownership of that is a workers’ cooperative where workers own the shares in that company, they have better terms and conditions, the profits are shared and that is a form of democratic ownership that does very well across the world.”
Asked if it would become mandatory under YourParty, the Coventry South MP added: “These are conversations that we should have about what forms of ownership we should have in our economy.”
It comes after Ms Sultana, a former Labour MP, told Your Party’s conference last weekend that she wanted to “nationalise the entire economy”.
