IF ANYONE was ever in any doubt about who holds power and political sway in Britain, the answer can be found within the pro-business rhetoric of the Labour leadership contest. The balance of power is shown in repeated references to “wealth creators” and those with “the spirit of enterprise.”

In its literal sense, “wealth creator” applies to everyone who is in work, who shows up for their employer day-in, day-out, spending their week in a job where the company rakes in profit, perpetuating a cycle of wealth creation.

Wealth is also created by teachers, sharing knowledge and educating young people who will go on to become future “wealth creators.”

Yet when Labour leadership candidate Andy Burnham talks of the party becoming friends with wealth creators he is not referring to you and I, or the teachers and support assistants at your local comprehensive. He is talking about big business, about multinational corporations and perhaps even of certain sections of the press who pride themselves on being experts on general elections.

That three of the four leadership candidates feel the need to endlessly stress “backing business” speaks volumes about the current state of play within British politics.

Politicians (especially it seems, those involved in leadership campaigns) are petrified of offending CEOs, bankers and press barons by tackling their respective roles in tax avoidance schemes, market manipulation and the global economic crisis, or by questioning recruitment practices which disadvantage people from poorer backgrounds.

This is not a new, post-general election phenomenon.

Labour was pandering to the likes of Ernst and Young long before Andy Burnham launched his leadership bid from the head office of a company which the US fined £82 million in 2013 after some of its most senior tax partners were caught developing, marketing and implementing tax avoidance schemes from 1999-2004.

By failing to draw sustained attention to the £70 billion which is lost annually through tax avoidance during the election campaign, many former Labour supporters felt the party was complicit.

When Nigel Farage’s Ukip attacked the principles of the welfare state, successfully appealing to voters in working-class communities across the country, where was the response from Labour highlighting the fact that benefit fraud — portrayed by news outlets as wide-ranging and pervasive — actually accounts for less than 1 per cent of the overall welfare bill?

Or that much of that same bill subsidises employers paying poverty wages in the form of tax credits? That those profiting from housing benefit are not the so-called “benefit scroungers,” envisaged living in the lap of luxury with Sky subscriptions and wide-screen televisions, but rent-gouging landlords and associated hangers-on such as Tory MP Richard Benyon, whose company Englefield Estate Trust took almost £50,000 of taxpayer money through housing benefit claims?

Labour failed to win the general election not, as the right-leaning press have declared, “because it was too left-wing” but because the radio-silence on such glaring affronts to British society left the party unable to defend either its own record in office or the people it supposedly represents.

The election of a new leader presents an opportunity to change direction, yet 75 per cent of the candidates seem convinced that the only way to succeed in 2020 is by championing big business “wealth creators” and cosying up to the Murdoch press, as Blair did during the New Labour years.

Labour has fallen for a Tory myth that the cause of the economic crash was a spending plan cooked up by Gordon Brown.

This is patently untrue, and it’s high time that Labour deconstructed the lie rather than running in fear of a trial by the right-leaning press.

There is an appetite for change, for the media monopoly to be challenged head-on and brought to account for its malpractices in the wake of the phone hacking scandal.

Leadership candidates paralysed by fear in the face of billionaire tax avoiders do not represent this change, as can be seen by the “business friends equals votes” approach.

The Labour Party needs to regain its integrity and appeal to the real wealth creators of this county — us. We in turn must reclaim our position as the rightful home of political power by building a strong, cohesive movement for change.