Jeremy Corbyn and Tom Watson: Labour's rock star buddies in search of power

Having just finished slating the Chancellor’s Budget in front of an eager crowd of around 1,000 Labour members at the Bethel Convention Centre in West Bromwich, the two comrades could barely hide their new-found mutual respect.

In fact, Mr Watson made a point of highlighting Labour’s burgeoning love-in with Mr Corbyn during his short speech that opened up the proceedings.

With a big grin on his face and his arms raised, he proudly announced: “Labour’s shadow cabinet is united behind our leader, to build a country for the many, not the few.”

It marked a stark contrast from the Labour party of mid-2016, when the West Bromwich East MP was hardly on speaking terms with his leader having suggested it was unelectable with him at the helm.

Far from presiding over a 'united' shadow cabinet, Mr Corbyn was struggling to find enough MPs to fill it at one stage.

By the end of that summer the pair had become embroiled in a public spat, with Mr Watson saying that Trotskyists were trying to influence the leadership election.

Mr Corbyn responded in kind by accusing his deputy of ‘peddling conspiracy theories’.

But everything changed rather abruptly this year. It was the early hours of June 9 and Labour lost the general election – but by far less of a margin than most people, including Mr Watson, had expected.

That was followed by what Mr Watson called 'a moment of clarity' in a field in Glastonbury, where the festival's silent disco was interrupted by chants of 'Oh Jeremy Corbyn'.

Now all appears to be rosy in the garden, with deputy praising leader at every available opportunity. He has even been known to sing a few bars of the Corbyn song himself. (Unsurprisingly, it was given several airings at the Bethel Convention Centre).

Meanwhile Mr Corbyn is convinced his party are on the crest of a wave.

Speaking to the Express & Star after Thursday night’s rally, he said Labour’s popularity had increased dramatically since the general election.

“I think its gone up a lot actually because party membership has gone up and the council by election results all across the country, not uniform, but generally, things are going well,” he said.

This, he said, was partly to do with the party developing the policies in its manifesto, which had been thrown together in two weeks after the announcement of the snap poll.

“But there’s a lot of work that we have to do,” he conceded, perhaps wary Labour had yet to take huge lead in any opinion polls.

He added: “I have set out some ideas on the the education service and social care system, as well as environmental policies, and things that we want to put forward, in particular the national Investment Bank. We are developing those ideas and a lot of party members are getting very excited about it. It is exciting times.”

The accusation frequently levelled at Labour is that the party is hopeless when it comes to explaining how it will pay for its elaborate plans.

Mr Corbyn wants to pump billions in to the NHS, housing and schools. He wants to raise the minimum wage and scrap the public sector pay cap.

The Labour solution is to ramp up taxes – corporation tax and income tax for the country’s top earners, to be precise.

It’s a move Mr Corbyn thinks the people of the West Midlands would get behind if it meant bringing an end to austerity.

He said: “We would put corporation tax up to about 26 per cent ultimately at the end of the first Parliament, which would be at the same level it was at the end of 2010. And we did do a costed manifesto and the primary big spending items are obviously student tuition fees and adult education fees, which we have said we would do.

“But it is also about properly funding health and social care which we would make sure happens because actually, there is an economic benefit to that, because if people don’t have to give up work to care for an older person they are clearly in work and therefore paying taxes rather than being in receipt of benefits, so there’s a kind of plus all round.

“With the housing investment, at the moment we build between 100,000 and 200,000 properties a year across the country – disproportionately too many luxury homes in London and the south east and too few homes in social housing units.

“We would change that balance around.

“There’s a virtuous circle in building houses. Create jobs, you get good quality homes and you create a supply chain.”

Continuing the 'eat the rich' theme of Labour 2017, he also aimed a jibe at critics of the party's spending plans, saying 'the magic money tree is doing really well - it's in the Cayman Islands, it's in the British Virgin Islands, it's in the Isle of Man, it's in the Channel Islands, and it's absolutely fine'.

"And so those people that are so witty and clever about how they've avoided taxation, I simply say this to them: sadly one day you may be old, sadly one day you may get a heart attack, sadly, one day your house might catch fire. At that point, please remember the way you short-changed our public services by avoiding taxation."