The proposed 11% pay rise for MPs - bringing them up to £74,000 a year (nearly £40 an hour!) - is an obscene insult to millions of workers suffering record levels of pay cuts and families hammered by cuts to benefits.

This adds to the remoteness of mainstream politicians from the working class majority population, and makes them all the more callous in carrying out policies that enrich the rich and impoverish the rest of us.

We demand all MPs reject this pay rise, and go much further than just a token opposition in the face of public fury by supporting the idea that MPs should live on the average wage of a skilled worker - with legitimate expenses vetted and monitored by public scrutiny. 

This income would make politicians far more in tune with those they claim to represent. And it is a policy with a precedent; it was carried out by a few socialist MPs in the 1980s and by all Scottish Socialist Party MSPs in the Scottish parliament.

Help end careerism and corruption in politics! Put principles before personal profit! Make MPs live in the same world as the people they represent!