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Labour conference - live updates: Jeremy Corbyn speaks to party faithful at Brighton rally Labour conference - live updates: Barry Gardiner attacks big business as historic Brighton gathering begins
(about 17 hours later)
Welcome to the start of The Independent's live blog from the annual Labour Party Conference in Brighton. On the eve of the conference last night, Labour accused big business leaders of “siphoning away” taxpayers’ money into their own pockets, leaving young British people without the future prospects they deserve.
This year's event is expected to be the largest ever after the party saw a surge in membership and a better-than-expected result in the snap general election in June. A senior figure in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet attacked corporate chiefs for “sitting on piles of cash” that should have been spent improving skills for young workers.  
Jeremy Corbyn will kick off the four-day event by addressing an eve-of-conference rally of party faithful on Saturday night, where he was expected to outline his vision that Labour is a 'government in waiting'. In an exclusive interview with The Independent Shadow International Trade Secretary Barry Gardiner warned executives they had missed a chance to show they could be trusted to meet their obligations to society and promised a Labour government would make them pay.
It comes as a major shakeup of party rules was due to be approved at conference, handing more power to the left wing of the party and cementing Mr Corbyn's strengthened position as leader. It comes after businesses returned to Labour conference this year, keen to understand what the future might hold under a Corbyn government in the light of the party’s better than expected performance in the election.
As well as the Labour leader's address later in the week, there will also be key speeches from senior MPs including Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell and Deputy Leader Tom Watson, while London Mayor Sadiq Khan is also expected to be given a last-minute slot after he was initially denied the chance to speak. The Independent recently polled various Labour manifesto policies, with those representing a crackdown on corporate excess proving highly popular – in particular a measure to cap the pay of top executives at a specific ratio of a firm’s lowest-paid worker won overwhelming support.
Mr Gardiner said: “The idea that somebody in the same company can say to somebody else in that company, ‘you are earning below the average wage of £28,000 a year, and yet I in this company am earning, in some cases, 50 times as much as you are’…it is just to treat your colleagues with contempt.”
He pre-empted the inevitable attack from critics that his words are “anti-business”, saying: “This is not anti-business in any way whatsoever. It is about saying look, let’s ensure everyone in a company has a stake in the company, they want it to do well, because they know if it does, they also do well.
“It’s common sense. It’s what people want. As The Independent’s poll found out, this isn’t a case of saying ‘this is something people should think about’.
“They already think it. They think ‘who are the bozos who think it’s right that somebody should be earning £10m a year, when somebody in that company is being paid less than £25,000. They think it doesn’t make sense, and it doesn’t.”