ED MILIBAND is right to want to hand powers to Britain’s regions in order to restore balance to an economy dominated by London financiers, but much of the strategy he outlined yesterday misses the point.

That four out of five net new jobs over the last four years were created in the capital is evidence that the political class is uninterested in huge swathes of the country.

The rot began decades ago, as over the latter half of the 20th century British governments acquiesced in the decline of an industrial and manufacturing sector that had led the world.

But the destruction of British industry for political reasons massively accelerated the process under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, and much of the regional poverty outside London stems from that time.

It was Thatcher’s government too that deprived local authorities of much of their financial independence through abolishing the rates.

Mr Miliband’s proposal to give local authorities greater control over how business rates are spent is not a bad idea.

But an overhaul of local government powers, including giving authorities the right to raise local income taxes to reduce dependence on Whitehall funds and clumsy instruments such as council tax which hit poorer families far harder than richer ones, would be a more effective policy.

Steps towards a federal Britain where elected regional governments wield real clout, as advocated by the Communist Party, would do far more to strengthen British democracy than the fetish for grandstanding elected mayors favoured by Labour peer Lord Adonis.

Mr Miliband’s rejection of greater public investment by central government, combined with a Tory-lite dig at “big spending,” raise concerns that the whole localism exercise may be an excuse to evade the real challenge Britain faces — reversing the disastrous “austerity” drive, giving us control of key sectors of the economy through public ownership and planning an economy with people rather than private-sector profit at its heart.

Many of his proposals could have come straight from the Tories, whose response was not even to disagree with Labour but to accuse it of “playing catch-up.”

This suggests that Unite leader Len McCluskey is spot-on — Labour leaders “don’t get” the scale of the crisis faced by ordinary women and men up and down the country.

They kow-tow to the right-wing media, cower at the prospect of challenging the parasitic corporations bleeding this country dry and allow the Conservative Party to dictate the political agenda by refusing to question its spending plans.

Bevan day

PROPOSALS from Unite to block a Margaret Thatcher day or force Labour to rename it after Aneurin Bevan give pause for thought.

Bevan’s crowning achievement, the foundation of Britain’s National Health Service, is certainly worth a bank holiday — and a day in his honour could be used to celebrate our greatest public service and the hundreds of thousands of hard-working staff who make it the envy of the world.

In the People’s Republic of China it was once a regular ritual for leading generals to publicly wash the uniforms of ordinary soldiers as a gesture of respect.

Jeremy Hunt, who has disgraced himself with his attempts to cheat NHS workers out of the pay rise they need, should take note.