Getting clearer every day

Or so it would appear. In fact, that gulf has always been with us and has always been bitterly apparent, at least to those on the downside of the gulf.

What has changed is twofold. First, the visibility of the gulf has altered, with information and disinformation flowing more freely than ever before.

Radio, television, the internet and the hard copy media mean that things that took weeks and months to percolate through society are presented at the drop of a hat to all and sundry.

And, second, the location of the chasm that separates rich and poor is shifting, at least in the public perception. It has always had a dual nature, of course.

Internationally, the developed countries have always maintained a huge gap, with the underdeveloped countries providing a vast reservoir of cheap raw materials and labour and serving up endless profits to the imperialist countries.

That provided the capitalist masters of the universe sufficient resources to buy off their skilled working class at the expense of exploited millions abroad.

And, to a major extent, that still happens. But it is no longer enough. The working people of Britain have been provided with high expectations in order to buy their silence. But capitalism can no longer meet the expectations that it has raised.

In the dog-eat-dog world of private enterprise, those at the top end are hogging the carcass for all that they are worth, widening an internal gulf that is becoming deeper and more visible all the time.

The TUC is campaigning for a Financial Transaction Tax which, it says, would raise enormous amounts of cash to offset poverty from a miniscule tax on the billions shifted in the City every day by speculators.

But, meanwhile, debt charity the Consumer Credit Counselling Service is warning that its workload has risen by 25 per cent over the last year from contacts by nearly half a million people struggling with debt.

The charity warned that only around a third had enough income even to consider a repayment plan.

So, while the bankers pay themselves million-pound bonuses and the shareholders rake in the dividends, half a million families are struggling with debts that they have no means of repaying and face only the prospect of further debt to keep themselves afloat.

Meanwhile, the government and all the main opposition parties are proposing swingeing cuts in the public sector to pay off the bankers' debts, cuts which will only drive the economy into further recession, worsening the plight of the indebted millions and adding to their number with a fresh wave of unemployed.

It seems paradoxical to many on the left that the public don’t simply rise up and say a resounding No to this continued exploitation. Well, that isn't the way that it works in Britain. It's not that direct.

But all the signs are there that people have had enough. A wave of industrial unrest is growing across the country, even in the face of court actions and claims of poverty from transnational companies that, they say, will inevitably result in job losses.

Huge profits made by the privatised utilities companies are adding a bitter counterpoint to ever-rising heating, lighting, transport and water bills, making the arguments for renationalisation ever more popular.

Bankers' bonuses and banking profits are a ludicrous companion to demands for cutbacks in the public sector and people are not blind to this.

The contradictions that capitalism consists of are sharpening daily and it is only by misdirection and misinformation that it still retains any credibility at all.

And the longer that new Labour chooses to avoid the real issues, the less likely it is that it will be taken seriously by an electorate which, while it doesn't yet acknowledge the answers, is steadily growing in its awareness of the real questions.