The Trades Union Congress has shone welcome light on the grotesque imbalance that has seen bankers’ bonus payouts outstrip the financial sector’s corporation tax payments by a ratio of two to one.

But calls for more transparency and regulation are misguided.

We have been peddled the lie for years that the private sector is better than public and that its excesses can be restrained or guided by regulators.

Wealth, we were assured, would trickle down to the rest of us so long as sufficient space is given to privateers to innovate and “drive” the economy.

Events before and since 2008 provide ample evidence that this simply has not happened.

The Tories and their allies would have us “move on” from the fact that the City casino caused the ongoing financial crisis — prompting an unprecedented bailout by we, the taxpayers.

But it is impossible to move on when instead of seeking repayment of this debt to us the free-marketeers have seized the opportunity to move in on the public sector and social security net in their hunt to control a bigger slice of the economy.

There’s a fundamental error in believing that a little tweaking here, a few more teeth there, and then we’ll reach some kind of balance.

Regulators have quite clearly failed to make a dent in the trajectory that has seen the private sector running off with money earned by the rest of us.

The City and the firms that it finances exist to generate cash in a parasitic way. Their sole motivation is to increase their rate of profit. They have no interest in wider society unless there is money to be made from dismantling its structures.

The regulation model fails to recognise this fundamental and inevitable driving force and the fact that there is no way to coax them to act benevolently.

Obscene bonuses — widely known to be a key driver of the economic collapse of 2008 — should not just be taxed but there must be a major clampdown on the whole financial system.

It is past time to end the era of light-touch government and blind faith in the market.

Democratic ownership and the return of government on behalf of the electorate, not self-interested parasites, is the only path that will stop this march towards an endless US-style nightmare of uber-inequality and social decay.

But while the Morning Star favours a Labour victory over a Tory one in 2015, there’s no time to waste in building the popular unity that is required to help forge an alternative trajectory.

A vote at the ballot box every five years will never be enough to alter the course of the free-marketeers who have seized control at the top.
That makes the task of mobilising the People’s Assembly movement one of the top priorities of the hour.

On March 15 hundreds of delegates will join a national conference in London to agree for the first time the political, organisational and tactical principles at its heart.

Diversionary calls for a new party of the left cannot be allowed to derail the unity of purpose that binds this unprecedented alliance of activist groups, community organisations and national bodies.

This is our country — and the People’s Assembly is the way we take it back.