The worst aspect of the “move the conversation on” advice to party activists contained in Labour’s Campaigning against Ukip document is the impression of dishonesty and embarrassment.

Encouraging voters on the doorstep to think more about Labour strengths than immigration makes no sense if they are obsessed with the issue.

It would be amazing if immigration didn’t have a large profile since some newspapers lead their front pages many times each week on the subject.

In addition, wild assertions by Ukip leader Nigel Farage about how many tens of millions of Bulgarians and Romanians are poised to hop on a bus and come over here to take “your” job, live off benefits, jump council housing waiting lists, fill local schools with children who can’t speak English and throttle health services are treated by commentators as serious contributions to debate.

Despite that, this supposed political outsider, who’s been on BBC TV Question Time more often than anyone but David Dimbleby, claims that this subject is banned from public debate — a ban only he has the guts to challenge.

Farage and his populist, right-wing free-market outfit are assisted by materials such as Campaigning against Ukip.

The Labour leadership must have known that this paper would reach the media, so why not launch it openly?

Why not acknowledge that many Labour voters have concerns over migration that are not, in general, based on racism or xenophobia.

They have a material basis that neither Labour nor any mainstream party has confronted.

Working people’s living standards have plummeted for the past six years as wages and benefits have not matched inflation.

In many parts of the country, the utterly inadequate minimum wage has effectively become the maximum wage too. It’s the going rate.

People know that unscrupulous employers offer substandard pay and accommodation to workers from other countries to take up jobs here that still offer a better return than what’s on offer at home.

Local authority homes for rent are as scarce as hen’s teeth because of the sell-off and non-replacement of council housing stock, forcing millions of poor people into the profitable private rented sector.

While state schools and NHS services have worked miracles to manage greater pressure on their facilities, government funding restrictions have put stresses and strains on their work.

Accepting the truth of this evidence and promising to do something tangible about is essential.

However, Ed Miliband’s resort to nonsensical pro-EU propaganda along the lines that leaving the neoliberal proto-superstate would be “a disaster for jobs, business and families” is rank scaremongering.

There is life after the EU, as Norway has shown, and pretending that bilateral trade with the eurozone would end if Britain left the EU is playground posturing really.

Miliband raised useful points in his Great Yarmouth speech, including a qualification period before EU citizens can claim jobless benefits.

But he needs to widen his horizons to challenge EU obsession with free movement of labour, goods, capital and services.

Without raising the minimum wage to a living wage and increasing the number of workplace inspectors, private firms will continue to exploit cheap foreign labour and undercut existing workers.

Miliband should also ditch reliance on the private housing market to counter homelessness and insist on adequate funding for public services.

People know when politicians are being less than honest. Failure to tackle the basic causes of working-class resentment risks fuelling it still further.