The politics of wage restraint collided with the politics of sport yesterday as Jeremy Corbyn pleaded with the Arsenal footballer Mesut Özil “to live with what you’ve got”.
Özil, a German international, has played for Arsenal since 2013. He has 18 months left on his contract and is said to be demanding £290,000 per week to sign a new deal, a fee that would put him on par with the league’s top earners.
The Labour leader is calling for wage restraint rules that would cap chief executives’ salaries at 20 times that of their lowest-paid employees.
Speaking on the Andrew Marr show, Mr Corbyn ruled out extending the proposed rules to footballers, pointing out that they were not bosses. He appealed, however, as an Arsenal supporter, for Özil to show restraint.
Asked if he had a message for the player, he said: “Thanks for your game — you are a fantastic player — but can you just live with what you’ve got at the moment?”
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Mr Corbyn also remarked that as a regular supporter of the club, he was contributing to Özil's income.
The Labour leader defended his proposal to cap high wages, saying that most people would regard the move as popular. However, he insisted that it should apply only to corporate businesses and not to fields such as entertainment or sport. “Footballers, while they are paid ludicrous sums of money which I suppose we all pay for through our tickets, in reality they’re employees for quite a short time with those clubs,” Mr Corbyn said.