What nobody has appeared to have picked up on today was the shocking rise in people living in poverty in the UK. 

In 2006/7 300,000 more pensioners and 100,000 more children are official classed as living in poverty.  As ever, the share of the income received by the top 10% keeps growing and the bottom 10% keeps falling making the gap bigger than at any time during the Thatcher period.

Now the usual moans will come from New Labourites - what about tax credits, minimum wage, child benefit rises etc.  Of course progress has been made but it has been limited and has not made the UK more equal. 

By sticking to a policy of refusing to tax the wealthy and large corporations more we are heading towards levels of inequality in the US & Hong Kong rather than doing as well or better than Scandinavia. A Compass thinker recently suggested a policy of 60% tax on income over 80,000 pounds and 70% tax on income over 150,000 pounds to pay for raising the personal allowance to 15,000 a year.  A vote winner if you ask me.  Will New Labour entertain it?  Will they Nelly.  I just wish they had the bottle to admit that the growing gap between rich and poor they simply don't care about no more. 

As Margaret Thatcher once declared 'there is no alternative' to Capitalism.  A system in which the ownership of an enterprise are in the hands of private shareholders to maximise profit from both the workers who are employed by them and the consumers which buy their products.

Is this really the case though?  In regions of Italy and Spain vast parts of the economy or organised into worker co-operatives.  For example, the Emilia Romagna region in Spain including 'Red' Bologna over 40% of GDP is generated by employee owned businesses and two thirds of the regions citizen are members of a co-operative.  This has led to the region being in the top 10 wealthiest regions in the EU with average income per person 50% above the national average.

In Venezuala poverty reduction has been achieved through public ownership of industry including oil revenues.   GDP growth is running at over 10% per year.  These examples show that there is a popular socialist alternative and it does not necessarily equate to poverty.

Even in the Labour movement here support for John McDonnell's leadership bid was recorded on Sunday in The Times as reaching 22% of party member's and trade union affiliates if he had made the ballot paper.  This is just after a couple of days media exposure before the nominations began for the Leadership Contest.  John advocated popular socialist policies like the above including an extension of public ownership but avoiding the beaurocracy of the nationalised industries by having worker, consumer and elected representatives on the board.

No alternative?  Well there is.  How can we foster its growth in the Labour movement and beyond?