WE gather for Congress 242 days before the general election. May 7 2015 is an election that will determine the destiny of our nations — do we choose to slump down deeper into the inescapable half of the hourglass economy or renew our faith in social justice?

The breadth of issues to be debated this week — rising inequality, youth joblessness, food poverty, job insecurity, mindless (failing) austerity, equality and destruction of Gaza — reflect the genuine engagement of the 6.4 million workers in political life. 

Our agenda comes from the branch meetings and workplaces of millions of working people. It is a set of demands that illustrate people’s hunger for change. 

The Tories, pathologically deaf to the concerns of working people, have made it clear it will be more of the same, but with extra bite — workers’ rights, human rights, even more welfare cuts. 

The danger for Labour is that, in timidity, they serve up little more than a thinner soup of Tory austerity.

With a legislative slate unlikely to trouble fretful MPs seeking maximum time defending their majorities, this will be the longest, nastiest election battle in history. 

The Tories, embarrassed by an ever-falling membership base and battling the mounting danger that EU convulsions will consume them once again, will make sure of that. 

A handful of private, extremely wealthy individuals have bought and paid for what once could call itself an independent political party. 

Their cash is already funding a battalion of enthusiastic young Central Office spies who, armed with smart phones and spite, will swarm out across our conferences looking for opportunities to depict our movement as the “enemy within” while their friends in right-wing media eagerly oblige with hysterical copy.

This pantomime “look over there” charade is what political strategist Lynton Crosby has been paid £500,000 to deliver. 

Designed to deflect electoral anger over the state of our NHS or the groaning burden of George Osborne’s borrowing, this is a strategy of creating smears and spreading fear — and has at its heart a profound belief that the electorate is stupid. 

It offers no vision for our people’s future and certainly will offer no promise to our kids, the first in generations to undergo a fall in living standards.

Hope, the hope for change, for a better world is what inspires people to the ballot box. 

It should be at the heart of our politics but is sadly lacking among the working class being held back by the sorry consequences of cuts-craven economics and with little prospect that the main parties will think afresh, despite the evidence that across austerity Europe economies are going into reverse.

Look at the energy of the referendum campaign in Scotland. People from tenement to town house are galvanised, deep in debate with one other about the nature of the nation they wish to inhabit. 

The safety of our NHS, the futility of austerity, the purpose of industry have all been wrestled with as the Scottish people consider the nation that they wish to be.

Regardless of the outcome of the referendum, this debate should give us all hope. 

At a time when more than ever it matters who sits in No 10 (big business’s grip on our world is already mighty — consider the Australian analysis which found that there are fewer than 300 employers with control over the working lives of billions), our people deserve better than wheel-greasers for the corporate giants.

Enough of accommodating business’s every whim, irrespective of the wider social impact. 

Workers in this country have seen their share of the wealth they create fall year on year since the 1970s, wages slide backwards, the spreading plague of job insecurity — yet business’s billions sit hoarded in the vaults. 

Bonuses are back for the banking elite, chief executive salaries are an eye-popping 143 times what the shop floor earns. 

Economists admit that the country is plodding along with more people in work but with fewer hours and lower wages. The explosion in self-employment — the latest mutation in insecure working — means that staggering numbers, possibly as many as one in six, are without sick pay, paid holidays and weekends, even the national minimum wage.

We need a government that is a gatekeeper, not a doormat.

There is little sign of this with the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). This Godzilla of a trade agreement consumes all before it, destroying the ability of governments to determine their economies. 

Secret courts will ensure that powerful corporations can never be scrutinised — and they can never lose either, no matter what they intend to do to our NHS, employment laws, even human rights. Hitherto sovereign nations will be bullied into doing the bidding of big business.

Almost half of the global economy and about a third of world trade will be governed by this one accord. 

The power of big business will be supreme, assisted in this by the British Tory Party which poses as the self-styled protector of the British interests in Europe. Small wonder public faith in politics is at rock bottom.

This is where Labour can do the right, and brave, thing. In standing up against TTIP, Labour does not look anti-business. What Labour looks like is a party that is the opposite of the Tories — one that believes that it is the duty of a government to protect and enhance the lives of its citizens, and will not permit the corporate elite to impede the course of social justice. 

From the Pope to Prince Charles, there is agreement that big business is out of control. 

Bank of England governor Mark Carney, who we’ll hear from this week, has warned that capitalism it is meant to work for the people, not the other way around.

Imagine, then, what a Labour Party standing strong against corporate abuse, strongly in favour of trade union rights, proudly aligned with the wider labour movement against exploitation and for democracy and justice would say to voters. Then the people would have a choice.

The political and economic consensus of the past 40 years has failed the people and, as the people of Scotland are showing, the people want better.

Those wishing to represent our nation should take heed. You have 240 days to earn our trust.

Len McCluskey is general secretary of Unite the Union.