Politicians have little idea how to solve inequality. This contributed to Brexit.

Politicians from all parties have little idea how to solve the problem of economic inequality, a failure that partly contributed to the vote for Brexit, the Conservative MP and former chancellor Kenneth Clarke has said.

Speaking to the Guardian after last week’s vote in favour of starting the process of Britain leaving the EU, Clarke said he felt a principal reason Britain voted to leave was “mounting anger about economic inequality … the gap between different parts of the country, with London and the south-east having a booming economy and nothing happening in some of the old industrial cities of the north and the north midlands”.

Clarke, who served in every Tory government between 1979 and 2014 and was chancellor of the exchequer under John Major, said he accepted that some blame lay with those governments, but added: “I think everybody who believes in liberal economic policies – which is the great bulk of politicians of the last few years – have never quite solved the problem of how to distribute the benefits better so that the whole country can be seen to benefit. We’ve been trying for years.”

Recalling his time as an inner cities minister under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, he said: “It all goes back to that time, and actually I think we’re still not sure how to do it. So we go through a period of rapid economic growth, [but] if you asked the question, ‘How is this going to benefit Hartlepool?’ I can’t pretend I know, and I don’t think I have met anybody who knows. Right and left. I don’t think Jeremy Corbyn has the foggiest notion how to spend the benefits of London’s prosperity either.”