ED MILIBAND’S years in the United States appear to have left more of a mark on him than his upbringing as the son of Marxist thinker Ralph Miliband.

He’s not so much class conscious as class catatonic.

Over the Atlantic the term middle class is liberally applied to much of the working population, helping to bamboozle people who in reality have close, shared economic and political interests as members of the wage-earning class.

True, the daily struggle of someone on a rock-bottom wage or toiling on a zero-hours contract means that the scale of the challenges they face to get by is far greater, and their quality of life disproportionately worse, compared to those who earn slightly more.

Equally, the opportunities to escape this total insecurity and enforced poverty evaporate rapidly the lower you are down the income scale.

But while a marginally higher income may or may not bring with it the ability to go out for the odd meal, more expensive clothes or a bigger TV, those people reliant on a wage to make ends meet share more in broader terms than separates them.

The vast majority use the NHS, send their children to state-funded schools, rely on shrinking council services, face pension cuts, rising bills, long hours and high housing costs, and in times of trouble will rely on the state’s social security provision to make ends meet.

Whatever Ed Miliband may believe, zero-hours contracts, precarious jobs, low wages, shrivelling pensions, indebtedness and workplace exploitation are increasingly affecting people once told to think of themselves as middle class in a ruling-class con trick.

Not for generations has the true nature of power within our society been more starkly exposed.

The country and its commanding heights are run by and in the interests of a tiny elite to which the vast majority has not a hope in hell of being part of.

The opportunism of this ruling class in grabbing more for itself and transferring the debt onto the rest of us has been breathtaking.

This is the scenario which Miliband and Labour should be addressing head on.

Instead they are continuing policies that will further fragment the working class into smaller social groups in reality separated by an economic Rizla’s width.

So today shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt will fail to tackle the attack on comprehensive education and refuse to challenge the free schools and academies that are fuelling social apartheid.

Next week shadow work and pensions secretary Rachel Reeves will unveil social security policies that will encourage more division by continuing to punish working-class people with no hope of finding a job because the free market is not providing them, and drawing a false distinction between them and those on the lowest incomes who are struggling to get by.

Miliband’s decision to revisit the hollow “middle-ground” rhetoric uttered by the likes of Blair, the Labour leader telling us that we can’t “become collectively better off without a strong and vibrant middle class,” is glaringly misplaced in the post-2008 world.

All, aside from a tiny tax-dodging few who continue profit from City dealings, face a sustained drop in their living standards in both income and quality of life.

At the same time the richest are getting richer and the services and support that the state once provided are being dismantled and picked through for private profit.

Rest assured that while Miliband wastes time playing new Labour-style electoral games, the ruling classes will waste not a moment in their pursuit of bleeding the rest of us dry.