TORY Britain has become a land of “grotesque extremes,” the TUC warned yesterday after new data revealed soaring pay among top chief executives as workers struggle with the longest pay squeeze in 200 years.

The High Pay Centre said the average annual wages of FTSE 100 chief executives had ballooned last year by a whopping £500,000, while the vast majority of people were hit with 40-year high inflation and skyrocketing energy bills.

The crippling disparity follows 15 years of plummeting take-home pay since profit-obsessed bankers sparked the massive 2008 financial crash, resulting in the most drawn-out salary squeeze since the Napoleonic wars.

TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said: “As households across the country have struggled to put food on the table, sales of Porsches have hit record levels.

“This is why workers must be given seats on company boards to inject some much-needed common sense and restraint.

“We need an economy that delivers better living standards for all — not just those at the top — but under the Tories, Britain has become a land of grotesque extremes.”

Referring to the biggest strike wave to sweep the country since the 1980s, GMB general secretary Gary Smith said: “While workers in sectors across the board were forced onto picket lines to make ends meet, these top brass were trousering fortunes.”

He blasted government claims that public-sector pay rises would only fuel price increases, saying: “If ministers genuinely think high wages are going to cause spiralling inflation, they probably need to think about curbing pay at the top of the tree instead.”

The damning interventions came after Labour said that the economy was “stuck in a low-growth trap” following more than a decade of Tory austerity and flat lining productivity.

The party’s latest analysis of economic forecasts, published last night, suggests that Britain’s growth is expected to be the slowest in the G7 group of so-called developed economies in the coming years.

“Buried in the small print of the Bank of England’s latest monetary policy report is a concession that growth is expected to be weaker throughout much of the forecast period, particularly during 2024 and at the beginning of 2025, Labour said. 

Shadow economic secretary to the Treasury Tulip Siddiq said that the problem had become the “hallmark” of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s troubled time in office.