Millionaire popstar Lily Allen reacted to today’s unveiling of the Labour Party general election manifesto by ‘welling up’ in a bizarre video which sparked ridicule after she posted it on Twitter.
With tears streaming down her cheeks, the supposedly sobbing singer tweeted a clip of herself struggling to contain her emotions after watching Jeremy Corbyn set out his eye-wateringly expensive plans for government.
Her voice cracking, she dabbed at her eyes with immaculately manicured hands and said: ‘Guys I’ve just watched the Labour manifesto. I think it’s the best manifesto I’ve ever seen.’
She filmed the post on TikTok – a viral video-editing platform – leading most viewers to conclude that the ‘tears’ may have been faked using a filter.
But it confused many of her 5.5million followers, who were left baffled whether or not she was being sarcastic or genuinely felt so strongly about Mr Corbyn’s blueprint for Britain.
In recent years, the Grammy-winner has turned to political activism and offered her backing to the left-wing Labour leader, who today published his strategy for overhauling public services by hitting the rich hard.
The Labour leader was accused of taking a ‘sledgehammer to the UK economy’ after he unveiled a ‘colossal’ £83billion manifesto splurge funded by hikes to death duties, ‘supertaxes’ on higher earners and swingeing levies on big business.
He vowed to shake up the ‘political establishment’ by implementing Labour’s ‘radical and ambitious’ manifesto which represents another step towards the hard Left for the party.
Mr Corbyn’s proposed day-to-day spending bonanza would amount to an extra £83 billion being blown every year.
That is up significantly on the estimated £50 billion which Labour had floated in its 2017 manifesto.
But the increase on revenue spending – effectively the cost of running the UK’s public services – was dwarfed by Mr Corbyn’s proposals for an escalation in capital outlay which appears to total more than £500 billion, the majority of which would be borrowed.
Mr Corbyn insisted that his day-to-day spending plans could be paid for by hiking taxes on the top five per cent of earners and on large companies.
However, the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank warned it was ‘not credible’ to claim the huge expansion of the state could be achieved purely on the backs of the rich.
Lily Allen reacted to today’s unveiling of the Labour Party manifesto by welling up in a bizarre video. With tears streaming down her cheeks, the sobbing singer tweeted a clip of herself hailing Jeremy Corbyn’s plan for government
Jeremy Corbyn today set out the Labour Party’s 2019 general election manifesto at an event in Birmingham
Railing against billionaires and the Establishment, Mr Corbyn rolled out his plan to hike up taxes for the wealthy in Birmingham this morning.
Among the flagship Labour policies which reduced the pop star to sobs were a new ‘super-rich tax rate’ of 50p which would be introduced for those earning more than £125,000.
Dressed in an animal-print jumper with her hair in a bob, Allen shared her post-manifesto launch response and the clip quickly racked up tens of thousands of views.
Accompanying her video, Allen – who is worth an estimated £15million – referenced the party’s central campaign slogan, #RealChange.
Her followers were left wondering whether the video had been posted as a joke, or whether she genuinely felt so passionate about the policy document.
One tweeted: ‘Why the crying filter? And I mean, it has to be a filter because it’s constantly identical and the tears disappear.
‘It makes your very very important point seem like you’re taking the p***, which you clearly aren’t, I’m so confused!’
Allen – who lives in a plush London flat after selling her £4.2million Cotswolds mansion in 2016 – also has an army of fans on Instagram, where she recently shared a tweet by Mr Corbyn who was promoting his education pledges.
The 34-year-old’s support for Mr Corbyn first appeared to surface when the Labour leader was forced to face down a backbench revolt from MPs disgruntled with his leadership.
In 2016, she tweeted: ‘All you Blairite Labour careerist b******* leave Jeremy Corbyn alone. If anyone can lead our country out of this darkness it’s him not you.’
In recent years, the Grammy-winner has turned to political activism and offered her backing to the left-wing Labour leader, who today in Birmingham revealed his radical vision to overhaul British society (pictured)
She followed this up by posting: ‘I’ll be protesting this evening in support of Jeremy Corbyn. Seems to be the only dignified person in in Westminster.’
At the 2017 election, her song Somewhere Only We Know was used as the backing track for a Labour campaign video.
In an interview last year, Allen said her activism was inspired after losing her baby to a miscarriage.
Speaking to the Observer’s New Review, she said: ‘That was the first time that something really, really traumatic happened to me,’ she said.
‘I’d had these amazing highs, and I had this horrible low, and I was left with a feeling of: I’m lucky to have Sam (Cooper, her former husband) and to have people around me to help me through.
‘And also that there were lots of people out there who go through shit all the time, these traumatic experiences are being lived by people up and down this country, and all over the world.
‘So if there’s anything I can do to help those people, use this platform to help them, then I’ll do it.’
She also suggested Britain was living under a ‘fascist regime’.
One of the causes Allen has pioneered is the Grenfell Tower tragedy, but sparked a backlash after suggesting that the death toll of the West London fire was higher than reported.
She said that ‘off-the-record’ figures given to police and fire crews put the number of victims at around 150, much higher than the official 71.