Labour's business manifestos have seldom been inspiring, but Ed Miliband managed to strike some of the right notes yesterday.

The leaders of all Britain's major parties remain wedded to an obsolete economic model which assumes private sector profit is the only possible engine for economic growth.

Cue the usual fawning to corporate tycoons "for what (they) do for our country every single day," as Miliband put it yesterday - a fallacy rooted in the myth that the owners and executives of businesses produce the wealth actually created by their workforces. 

The Labour leader issued a roll-call of the apparent virtues of businesses, but most were easily faulted. 

"Creating wealth"? See above.

"Making profits"? Well, creaming off the profits created by the labour of others is more common. This is taken to an extreme by firms that don't even produce anything of value, such as our out-of-control banking sector, or firms that leech off our public services through the scandal of outsourcing.

"Providing jobs"? It doesn't apply to the asset-strippers and private equity firms that happily throw entire workforces onto the dole - witness the disgraceful treatment of City Link's staff on Christmas Day last year - to protect their ill-gotten gains.

"Playing by the rules"? Give us a break, 

And as for "paying taxes that support our public services..." that would be nice.

We might hope that Miliband sought to embarrass his audience, or that some awkward foot-shuffling and staring at the floor from his well-heeled listeners took place as he waxed lyrical on their fictitious contributions to society. But the brass neck of Britain's corporate overlords suggest it's unlikely.

And the reference to an EU referendum as "playing politics" was out of step with public opinion, which backs us having such a choice.

This was a shameless big for corporate support for the neoliberal EU, currently imposing austerity across a continent and negotiating the secretive TTIP deal with the US.

So was there anything creditable in yesterday's address?

Actually, yes. Miliband pledged greater investment in infrastructure in accordance with a "proper industrial strategy," highlighting two key weaknesses of the free-market zealots currently mismanaging the economy.

This was in pursuit not just of higher profits but a higher waged and higher skilled workforce, something he was right to link to productivity.

The Tories like to boast of how many jobs "they've" created.

In fact they haven't - capitalism is a boom and bust model and its crises don't last forever. There was bound to be an economic recovery at some point and a rise in the number of jobs.

George Osborne's savage cuts routine combined with the Tory assault on workers' rights across the board did not produce Britain's still unimpressive economic growth, which is in fact a tired limp back towards where we were in 2007.

But they have affected the nature of that growth - its reliance on an unstable housing bubble, its failure to produce any rise in ordinary workers' living standards and the explosion of insecure poverty pay jobs that trap millions in a lifetime of uncertainty and mounting debt.

Miliband points to low productivity in the workplace. Is it coincidental that British workers work some of the longest hours in Europe? The TUC found last year that one in five workers is putting in the equivalent of an extra day's worth of unpaid overtime a week.

Is it surprising that workers subject to constant anxiety on how to make ends meet, shackled to zero hours contracts and earning less than the living wage may not be realising their potential?

If Labour can offer hope to these people, it will win on May 7. But it needs to talk to them, not a smattering of business bigwigs, if it wants a hearing.