Failing on all fronts

Shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna is a little charitable in describing the Prime Minister as "totally confused and inconsistent."

"Two-faced shameless apologist for City profiteers" might be more accurate.

The only thing in Cameron's favour is that he feels unable to continue the pretence of commitment to the oxymoron of "moral capitalism" and prefers to nail his colours openly to the mast of unbridled greed.

His statement forms part of a co-ordinated campaign by the City and its political representatives to polish capitalism's tarnished reputation.

The conservative coalition felt the need for a short time to echo the widespread anger of people suffering cuts in their living standards and seeing those responsible for economic crisis still pocketing huge bonuses.

But this was never going to be more than a temporary phenomenon. The Tory-led government is a creature of big business and its backers will not tolerate sustained criticism of their prime activity - making profits.

That's why Chancellor George Osborne - another beneficiary of inherited wealth, having walked into a £30 million trust fund when he was 21 - declared that the Con-Dem coalition government is "relentlessly pro-business."

Of course it is. That's where ministers' collective and individual interests lie.

That's why Cameron feels no compunction about misrepresenting capitalism's motivation, claiming that business is the best way to "smash poverty."

Poverty can only be "smashed" if poor people's incomes are increased, preferably by the unemployed finding jobs but also by a higher state pension and improved benefits for those too old or otherwise unable to work.

The government is failing on all fronts, dumping tens of thousands more people on the jobs scrap heap and freezing or reducing the real value of pensions and other benefits.

Cameron's claim that "snobbish attitudes" deny business any inherent moral worth and prefer it to stay out of "social concerns" masks his government's determination to allow the private sector to milk our public services through so-called partnership that facilitates private companies' involvement in services previously supplied by the state.

Private-sector penetration of the NHS, welfare to work, police services, the Civil Service and local authority responsibilities is justified on the false premise that private is better.

Nothing gives the lie to this assertion more effectively than the record of Britain's private banks, which Cameron is keen to rehabilitate as responsible wealth creators.

Yet the state-owned RBS bank still operates under capitalist rules rather a public-sector ethos.

That's why a tiny proportion of market traders are paid huge bonuses while 28,000 bank staff, such as cashiers and call centre operators, receive nothing and most others get 1 or 2 per cent.

RBS is like a scale model of capitalism, with the top 1 per cent benefiting most, while whinging incessantly about how hard done by they are, and the vast majority carrying the can for the deeds of others.

Exorbitant bonuses for the few are what catches the public eye, but these are merely a symptom of the basic problem, which is capitalism itself.

Capitalism will not reform itself. It needs firm political action to use a combination of taxation and public ownership to reverse the balance of wealth and power.