LAST week’s parade of competing Tory ghouls, strange apparitions and ideological monsters revealed a deep unease about the party’s prospects among leading figures.

But one thing stood out clearly — PM Rishi Sunak’s speech which set out the need to draw a line under the record of his party’s own period of government.

So even the Conservatives after 13 years of government recognise that they need to offer a rupture with the recent past.

This offers an opportunity to Labour.

Not only are the Conservatives at war with themselves over their ideological direction, they also are reflecting the sense in the country that we can’t go on in the same old way any more.

Labour’s task is to seize this moment and to harvest the widespread malaise by offering to be the change which the Tories can never be.

Our political enemies will exploit any implication that we represent Establishment thinking, a failing status quo or a discredited elite project.

Our country’s infrastructure is crumbling and our public services are falling apart because of austerity. And we are approaching a number of cliff edges which if we’re not careful a Labour government may fall off.

The NHS Confederation and NHS Providers said services may have to be cut unless NHS England receives an extra £10 billion in funding next year, in order to cover pandemic-related costs and reduce the backlog in operations and treatments.

Unison has made a point of showing loyalty to the Labour leadership. So perhaps when the union speaks its voice ought to be heard. It has recently argued that local councils have a hole in their finances exceeding £3.5bn collectively for the coming financial year, making it extremely likely they will have to make huge cuts in essential services and jobs.

The general secretary of Unison, Christina McAnea, has said: “Essential services can’t run on thin air … Yet more service cuts and job losses are sadly inevitable across the country unless the government intervenes with the lifeline of significant extra funding.”

Research shows that five of the 20 local authorities with the largest funding gaps are also in the worst 20 local authorities for deprivation.  

Indeed, the top 10 per cent of England’s most deprived council authorities have seen a cut almost three times as high as the richest 10 per cent of councils. 

So how will a Labour government provide the “significant extra funding” that McAnea rightfully points out is required?

The Labour leadership wants to show fiscal rectitude in an attempt to stave off political attacks about alleged “Labour profligacy.” 

But there’s a serious risk it puts a Labour government in a straitjacket that prevents it from moving our country forward.

This is demonstrated by Labour’s fiscal rule that debt must be falling as a share of national income after five years, and the deficit on day-to-day spending must close.

It closely resembles that imposed by the Tory Chancellor.

The corollary of this fiscal rule can be found in Labour’s tax policies.

Britain’s tax structures after decades of neoliberal dogma lack any sense of social or economic justice.

The shadow chancellor has ruled out raising income tax, capital gains tax or introducing a wealth tax. One tax which hasn’t yet been ruled out is a rise in VAT — a regressive tax which hits working people the hardest.

Lukasz Krebel, senior economist at the New Economics Foundation, has warned that “if Labour gets into government, it mustn’t let these outdated dogmas take precedence over investing in our future.”

The main rate for corporation tax in this country was 52 per cent until 1982. Now it’s just 25 per cent.

The highest income tax rate was 83 per cent when Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979. Now it’s just 45 per cent.

As a result the tax burden is increasingly falling on working people.

But in important corporate sectors, profits are booming and dividend payments have gone through the roof.

The net rate of return for manufacturing companies increased from 8.4 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2022 to 8.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2023.

Services companies, which make up around three-quarters of all UK economic activity, increased their net rate of return from 15.7 to 16.1 per cent over the same period.

The FTSE 100 index’s total dividend payout is projected to reach £83.8 billion in 2023, compared to £76.1bn in 2022. Next year it’s forecast that payments will reach £89.4bn.

These are astounding sums of money, which will line the pockets of the wealthiest people on the planet. The super-rich have quite literally never had it so good.

But there is a solution to our country’s economic problems; reinsert the notion of social justice into our tax system. Tax highly profitable corporations and the richest in our society and use the money to rebuild our crumbling public services and infrastructure.

It isn’t as though such a policy would be unpopular.

A YouGov poll in August showed that 49 per cent of voters think that businesses do not pay enough tax, compared to just 10 per cent who think they pay too much.

The same poll shows that even 40 per cent of Conservative voters think that businesses should be taxed more.

Polling on personal taxes tells a similar story. Another poll found that 63 per cent of voters believe the richest in society are not paying enough tax and should be taxed more, compared to just 6 per cent who think taxes on the richest are too high.

As I mentioned in a report two years ago, a wealth tax could raise around £218.4bn in extra revenue over five years.

Change is in the air. Even the Tories dimly perceive they must do something.

Our task is to develop the arguments, build the case, and construct a movement powerful enough to insist that there is a better way.

A better country is waiting to emerge if we have the courage to occupy the empty space offered by a mouldering Tory Party edifice at a time when the discredited and crisis-prone structures of British capitalism call out for a new path.

Jon Trickett is Labour MP for Hemsworth in West Yorkshire.