When politicians propose a new policy, a quick glance at who squeals loudest usually indicates who stands to benefit.

That’s even when the initiator — Labour leader Ed Miliband — plays down the significance of his proposal on the rented housing market by insisting that it doesn’t amount to rent control.

In reality, his pledges to keep private landlords’ rent rises within a set level and to ban estate agents from charging letting fees to tenants are quite modest.

Something similar was introduced in the Irish Republic a decade ago and even Tory Communities Secretary Eric Pickles has floated the idea of index-linked rent review clauses, so this is not a radical wealth-transfer proposal.

Despite this, Miliband’s position is an improvement on the current landlords’ free-for-all, so it should be welcomed.

So who’s squealing? Well, there’s the Institute of Economic Affairs right-wing think tank, which complains that rent controls would distort the market — as though market forces have successfully met people’s housing needs.

Tory Party chairman Grant Shapps derided the Miliband scheme as a “short-term gimmick,” accusing Labour of “political tampering,” whatever that means.

Shapps even claimed that Labour’s proposal mirrored radical steps in housing taken by Venezuela’s late president Hugo Chavez, but this seems extravagant praise for such a modest step in comparison to the giant strides carried through by the Bolivarian revolution.

This also elevates Pickles to undeserved honour in the pantheon of socialist heroes.

It is obvious that Tories and their hangers-on froth at the mouth over any policy with the potential to temper private landlords’ greed.

Whether this is a position of principle or is linked to the reality that no fewer than a quarter of all Tory MPs are private landlords is a moot question.

Labour’s decision to concentrate on the cost of living as the key political issue to underpin its electoral strategy, especially for next year’s general election, has attracted criticism in light of media acceptance of government claims about the economy.

However, the importance of a comfortably off minority of TV journalists exhibiting their willingness to be mesmerised by convergence of price inflation and average wage lines on a graph should not be exaggerated.

Most working people understand the hit that their living standards have suffered since 2008.

Labour’s rescue of the private banking system from its self-inflicted crisis had the unwelcome side-effect of simultaneously plunging the working class into calamity by making it bear the cost of the banking bailout.

People suffering cuts in real pay, pensions and benefits appreciate that official inflation figures don’t tell the full story.

They know that the rich minority living off inherited wealth, property, privatised public assets and a newly fattened-up finance sector have dodged the cost of living crisis that still plagues working people.

Being offered three-year housing contracts rather than short-term lets and seeing a limit to how high the rent can go is an advance for tenants.

But it is unlikely to enthuse Labour’s lost electorate, those who no longer back any party or register a protest vote for Ukip.

Most private sector tenants would prefer the security of council housing, but Miliband has yet to commit an incoming Labour government to finance the next generation of local authority homes to rectify a situation that guarantees a bonanza to private landlords.

That commitment is overdue to break the capitalist stranglehold on working people’s finances.