A TOP academic close to Ed Miliband has urged Labour to ditch the “tired old discourse of responsible capitalism.”

Leo Panitch, who co-edited the Socialist Register magazine with Mr Miliband’s father Ralph, said that the only winners would be far-right parties if Labour did not offer a bold alternative.

In an article for the Guardian, he wrote: “If [the British public] are not offered a positive vision and plan for a renewed democratic socialism that embodies cooperation rather than competition as the basis of social life — if they are not offered, that is, any alternative to capitalism — they will increasingly cling to whatever toehold they have within it at the expense of the ‘others’.”

Mr Panitch, who teaches at Toronto’s York University, warned that Mr Miliband’s talk of “responsible capitalism” was a “contradiction in terms” and would only alienate voters.

He is still close to the Miliband family and has visited the Labour leader on visits to Britain.