When former ministers pop up in the media it’s often a sure sign they’ve got a book coming out. 

Step forward Frank Field MP, who was welfare reform minister under Tony Blair.

His book, Blue Labour: Forging a New Politics, is a worrying indication of a restive right within the party — Blue Labour being a right-wing grouplet founded by Labour peer and academic Maurice Glasman in 2009 and featuring the rather odd slogan of “family, flag and faith.”

In yesterday’s Independent, Field called on Labour to “outflank David Cameron by committing itself to ending the free movement of labour within the EU,” warning that “without a fundamental control of the borders there is nothing to prevent another seven million immigrants coming to Britain during the next decade-and-a-half, to match the seven million who have entered the country since 1997.”

The background to the rise in such ideas is the policy vacuum that’s existed in the Labour Party ever since the 2010 election defeat.  

New Labour gained control of the party in 1993 and systematically eliminated democratic structures, grassroots policy-making and promoted its own special brand of “third way” economics, promoted by the likes of Peter Mandelson et al.  

The Blair and Brown governments made appalling and unforgivable decisions on Iraq and Afghanistan. On the domestic front, they had a much more mixed record, with considerably more money going into the NHS, good progress made on equality laws, but also a continuation of essentially Tory policies on the funding and operation of the public sector.  

The promotion of private finance, the contract culture and internal markets in NHS and local government ended up with many people on low wages, while effectively working for the public sector.

This vacuum in the debate is only partly filled by Ed Miliband quite rightly saying that one of Britain’s problems is low wages and low living standards and quite rightly saying the NHS needs far more money in it.  

However this is seriously undermined by an economic strategy put forward by Ed Balls and Chuka Umunna which has only modest aspirations of raising the minimum wage and at the same time proposes the continued freezing of some benefits, particularly child benefit, as well as continued restrictions on public-sector pay.

Alan Milburn’s recent utterances on equality were well made and well put. 

He told media outlets that the risk is that young people today “simply do not have the opportunity to progress” and what was needed in government was a “more rounded sense of what makes people poor.”

But tragically we have to remember that these comments come from someone who presided over the return of the internal market to the NHS and promoted private finance.

We do know that inequality in Britain is getting worse. 

Andrew Fisher, writing for the Left Economics Advisory Panel, put this in stark terms, pointing out how Tory tax plans will simply ease life for the rich at the expense of the poor.    

“Higher rate taxpayers earning £50,000 or more a year by 2020 will see a cash benefit of nearly three times the basic rate taxpayers, ensuring a tax break for the top 15 per cent of earners.”   

This of course is part of a wider inequality that affects Britain, where now half of the children in the most deprived areas are living in poverty. 

The highest poverty level in London is in Tower Hamlets, the lowest being Richmond-upon-Thames, barely 10 miles away.

I notice that the HMRC website claims it is “our job to make sure that both businesses and individuals pay the right amount of tax” and “challenge those who don’t play by the rules.”

Well, many of us need some convincing on this. Tax dodging seems to be something only rich people can get away with. 

Blue Labour and new Labour do not offer a credible political answer to the aspirations of working-class voters in Britain. 

Ukip offers xenophobia and immigrant-bashing and the Tories offer greater and deeper inequality.

If Labour is to succeed in winning the 2015 election, something far more radical has to be offered where we ignite the enthusiasm of those who are facing housing and employment problems which hold them back in their lives. 

Promoting austerity and free market economics will deal with none of those issues. 

LAST Saturday there was a huge turnout of trade unionists and anti-austerity campaigners from all over the country for the TUC Britain Needs a Pay Rise demo.  

I was struck by the determination of people, many of whom had clearly never been on a demonstration before, who clearly wanted a radical departure from austerity policies.

I hope that the TUC will stick with its economic strategy and that all unions will in turn put huge pressure on the Labour Party regarding the manifesto for the 2015 election.  

While David Cameron and his wealthy friends happily parade Britain’s increased employment figures, claiming vindication for their austerity agenda, the reality is of course very different.   

Many have lost benefits through sanctions and therefore do not appear on any statistics.

Many who have lost their jobs in the public sector have been replaced by contract workers on zero hours and low pay, with no pension entitlement and no future commitment to the service.   

Managers who have been made redundant often end up as highly paid consultants in virtually identical positions to those they vacated as public-sector employees just a few months before — but at extra cost to the public purse.  

This is a disastrous situation for the quality of public services. 

Those who marched last Saturday for an end to austerity Britain show just how much enthusiasm there is for the principles of universal healthcare and a society that gives real social security rather than the poverty and sanctions offered by the Tory/Lib Dem social security cuts. We need, and deserve, better.

ON Tuesday night in Parliament there was a very interesting meeting called to support Barnet Unison care workers. There in solidarity were Care UK strikers from Doncaster and St Mungo Broadway strikers from the housing charity.  

Speaker after speaker explained the horrors of being a zero-hours contract care worker on a minimum wage, moved from job to job, unable to build up a proper relationship with those they are caring for and not given sufficient time to meet their needs.  

These are deeply caring professional people who want to do a proper job with sufficient time to look after those who most desperately need it.  

Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) made a passionate appeal to keep the independent living fund and protect it from cuts in local government funding as it is transferred out of the DWP. 

The meeting turned quite quickly to the politics of our time and in one poignant moment there was a plaintive call by one carer saying: “I want to see political choice, with one side putting people before profit.”  

This followed the very moving speech by Care UK strikers from Doncaster, having met Ed Miliband, who wanted to see a change in Labour policy to pledge not just better wages but an end to the contract culture in what has become the care industry.

Jeremy Corbyn is Labour MP for Islington North.