What is it about leading Labour politicians that makes them feel they have to deflate their supporters by emphasising the supposed need for “tough” and “unpopular” economic decisions?

There is nothing tough about axing living standards for low-paid workers and those on benefits.

Every right-wing minister from whatever party has never had difficulty in putting the boot in.

Ed Balls’s “tough” declaration that he will cap child benefit at below the rate of inflation dovetails with this approach and it certainly won’t be unpopular with the billionaire media that emits a constant chorus of pro-City bias.

If Balls had any, he would be promising policies to reverse the decades-long transfer of national income and wealth to the rich from the poor.

A huge proportion of traditionally Labour-voting Scots went against the advice of party leaders last week and voted Yes in the Scottish independence referendum.

Some may be committed nationalists, but many more were determined to register disgust at Labour’s adoption of anti-working-class policies barely distinguishable from the Tories and the Liberal Democrats.

Listening to Balls ramble on about “responsibility,” fiscal prudence and the need to continue the conservative coalition’s attacks on state spending, including vital services, benefits and public-sector pay, will have convinced many people that they were right to do so.

The City will be delighted by his plans to adopt the Tories’ welfare cap, scrap pensioners’ winter fuel allowances and make people work longer before receiving their pension.

But how many erstwhile Labour voters will switch off and treat calls to back Labour next May with similar contempt to that offered them by Balls and company?

Contrast the conference reception offered to Balls’s dull-as-ditchwater corporate orthodoxy with that enjoyed by Unite leader Len McCluskey.

McCluskey’s message that the working-class cannot be ignored without paying a huge political price ought to fall into the category of stating the bleeding obvious at a Labour conference.

But those who cut their teeth on the new Labour aberration of challenging the Tories by sucking up to the City while gambling that working class voters had nowhere else to go still refuse to accept that the snake-oil salesmen have had their day.

They contend like latter-day Thatcherites that “there is no alternative” to the austerity agenda demanded by three-card-trick specialists who spearheaded the private banking drive to global crisis.

How to balance the books and demonstrate our fiscal responsibility other than by slashing public expenditure and holding down working-class living standards, they ask rhetorically.

By taking steps to ensure that everyone who is supposed to pay tax does so, is the simple response from Tax Research UK director Richard Murphy.

Most workers couldn’t dodge tax even if they were inclined to do so because their payments are deducted every week or month at source.

But tax contribution has become largely voluntary in recent years for wealthy individuals and companies based in Britain, as governments and the City rely on the same handful of tax advisory firms whose accountants move easily and fruitfully between them.

Murphy, who launches a report on the scale of corporate tax avoidance at Labour Party conference today, identifies the scale of the problem and suggests viable remedies.

When will Labour’s front bench display real toughness in standing up to the media by dropping their cheap shots against poor people in favour of tackling society’s fat cats?