Warm words aren't enough

Working people and the poor are constantly written off in capitalist Britain, especially under this government of the privileged and for the privileged.

Miliband's rejection of the "trickle-down" theory of prosperity is well founded since the idea that the poor are helped out of poverty by making the rich richer has been exposed for decades as a con-trick.

Similarly, his identification of overstretched workers, small businesses and youth as "the forgotten wealth-creators of our country" redresses the false picture favoured by media and politicians alike.

For too long, the City fat cats who have wallowed in superprofits generated by speculation, exploitation and fraud have been lauded as wealth creators rather than as misappropriators of national income.

They have bought political leaders as a result of financing their personal offices, sponsoring "research" and conferences and seconding corporate leaders as advisers to governments.

And guess what?

Their advice always revolves around pay restraint for workers, tighter control of state benefits and deregulation for big business to allow it to pursue "wealth creation."

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When Miliband asserts, as party leaders frequently do, that there are no easy answers to the country's problem and that every citizen has to display responsibility, alarm bells ring.

Not because easy answers exist or irresponsibility is preferable to its opposite but because such assertions have often been the prologue to a programme of belt-tightening for the working class.

The Labour leader's evocation of the "indomitable spirit" exhibited by a man who walked 11 miles to a job interview ought to arouse waves of anger too that someone can be reduced to such poverty and denied assistance to pay his travel costs.

What does it say about Britain today that some people have personal helicopters, yachts and luxury vehicles costing hundreds of thousands of pounds while a jobseeker cannot afford his bus fare?

Miliband promises to embody hope, which is an essential value.

But he must also mobilise anger in response to an increasingly divided society.

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One aspect of the opposition leader's idea of "responsibility" is that transnational corporations should pay their fair share of tax, but this can not simply be a moral appeal to big business.

Every major company exposed as paying as little as it wants to in taxation has stressed that it is doing nothing legal, which is unfortunately true.

Government has colluded over decades in legitimising tax avoidance havens, more than half of which are situated in territories owing allegiance to Westminster.

When Miliband gets down to a more detailed sketch of his policies, closing down these boltholes for the rich and big business must be a priority.

Workers on pay-as-you-earn have no choice over meeting their collective responsibilities, so why should tax be a matter of choice for wealthy beneficiaries of a society that protects their property and physical well-being from criminal attack?

The Labour leader has the difficult job of reconnecting with the millions of working class voters who abandoned his party in response to the pro-City policies of new Labour.

They can be won, as can others taken in by the dishonest rhetoric of the governing coalition partners, but it will require more than warm "one nation" words and a winning smile.