Just a slight hint of class

Almost. But, unfortunately, not quite.

It would seem that Prime Minister Gordon Brown has finally realised the potency of attacks on the Eton and Oxbridge axis of posh politicians who make up the leadership of the Tory Party.

Certainly, his sniping about tax policies designed on the “playing fields of Eton” seemed to penetrate the Tory Opposition leader’s armour of smugness and self-satisfaction and sting Mr Cameron enough to generate a sharp response.

And so it should have, because, despite all the pseudo-democratic camouflage that the Tories have draped themselves in, they are still the party of “good family, good breeding and good background,” by which they mean, of course, that the silver spoon marks should still be visible on every orifice, for a chap to be a “chap.”

Oh, they flirted with William Hague and Liam Fox, they even accepted Eric Pickles, but, if you want to get to the real top, it’s still Eton, Oxbridge and the Bullingdon Club or equivalent.

It’s a pity that Mr Brown only took a bit of a snipe. It will gain him a few votes, but that’s about it.

Now, if he was to look at all new Labour’s policies through the lens of class interest, that would give a whole new impetus to his approach to the next election and would win him a damn sight more than just a few votes.

Chancellor Alistair Darling is, it seems, to take forward a whole raft of measures which are described by him as “making the broadest shoulders bear the biggest burden.”

Included in this are likely to be rises in inheritance tax, a windfall tax on bankers’ bonuses and sticking with the new 50p rate of income tax to be introduced on earnings of more than £150,000 from next April.

Well, it’s a good start, but these are nibble-round-the-edges measures, mere apologies for a real attack on inequality.

They are certainly better than nothing, but would be vastly improved by a financial transaction tax, which would, for once, mean that share dealings had some element of socially useful product rather than just speculative profit or loss.

And, for pity’s sake, why just a tax on bankers’ bonuses? Why not an all-out attack on banks’ investment profits, taxing as a windfall any excess profits?

Mind you, the transaction tax, if set at one level on new share issues by a company and at a higher one for subsequent trades in the same shares by others would probably serve the same end rather more efficiently, since it is on these meaningless subsequent trades that banks’ dealers are making so much money for their companies and bonuses for themselves.

The sole remaining chance of electoral success for new Labour and, let’s face it, avoiding the enormous extra damage that a Tory government would do, is for new Labour to look critically at the measures that Mr Darling is proposing and ask: “Are they enough?”

The general direction seems sound enough, but the level of the attack is so weak that one can’t really see the voters being inspired to back something nearly indistinguishable from the Tories’ blatantly self-serving suggestions.

It may be a faintly ludicrous spectacle to imagine, Mr Brown, Mr Darling and Lord Mandelson donning cloth caps and fighting a legitimate class battle in the interests of working people, but that’s all that will get them re-elected at this stage of the game.

The apologism for capitalism and toadying to its every whim is a tactic that belongs to the Tories.

And, admit it, Mr Brown, they do it better.