According to the official Office of National Statistics latest report 19.3 million persons in Britain had an income below 60 per cent of the national median at some point during 2010-13.

That is nearly a third of the entire population and a higher proportion than for the EU as a whole.

Britain’s figures are even higher for pensioners (40 per cent) and single-parent households (60 per cent).

These statistics are awful for the sixth largest economy in the world, but there is a deeper hypocrisy behind them.

At the general election the Tory manifesto and David Cameron’s speeches resonated with calls for aspiration for everyone.

So what are the aspirational chances for the 20 million people at the bottom of the pile when George Osborne’s first act in the new government is to target them? It has equally to be admitted that among Labour’s leadership contestants the air has been thick with expostulations of aspiration for all.

How is that compatible with continued support for austerity which hits the poorest hardest?

What makes this sanctimonious pretence of aspiration for all so bitter is that Osborne is now statutorily blocking off any contribution to deficit reduction from the very rich. He is going out of his way by gratuitously using a parliamentary bill to emphasise there will no increase in taxes in the next five years.

In terms of financial management that is a very silly move when the future state of the economy over the next five years is unknowable, but it does reveal just how far this government is prepared to go to squeeze the pips out of the very poor while letting the filthy rich off untouched.

Just how grotesquely unfair and unbalanced this is is exposed by the simple facts. Nearly 20 million people in Britain have been living on an income less than £240 a week at some time in the three years to 2013 (and the number will be larger in 2013-5 as the cuts have accumulated) while there are 100,000 millionaires and 73 billionaires in Britain.

Osborne has cut income tax for those on more than £3,000 a week, and the Sunday Times rich list declares that the 1,000 ultra richest persons have doubled their wealth in the last six years since the crash to £518 billion (yes, billion) today.

Yet the former who never caused the crash are now being mercilessly targeted whilst the latter who are culpable are given impunity. Aspiration for all? How can Cameron and Osborne even spit out the words?

Aspiration for the bottom third means at least a living wage, ending zero-hours contracts, stopping the aggressive sanctioning of the jobless, repealing the bedroom tax, removing the assessment of work capability for disabled people away from private multinationals and restoring it to the NHS, building houses for social renting at 50 per cent of market rates, providing apprenticeships or in-work training for all young people, and a lot more. Who eulogising aspiration for all will promise all of these?

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It’s well understood now that a major reason for Labour’s heavy defeat was its abject failure to throw back into the Tories’ face their preposterous rewriting of history that Labour was responsible for the financial/economic crash triggered by the bankers and the international recession. 

But that is only part of the story. A reformist party bent on transformational change can only succeed if inextricably linked with a powerful social movement to drive through its aspirations.

Focus groups, spin doctors, and central direction with demands to stay on message won’t do it.

Until the 1980s the Labour Party had a mass movement centred round a systematic programme of political education and democratic decision-making focused around the annual conference.

The removal of that during the Blair-Mandelson regime has left Labour without the heft to bring about major social change from below, which is where alone it can genuinely take root.

No progressive party can fight alone and succeed against the North Korean propaganda of British tabloids — at least until rules on balance and impartiality are enforced — which provide an instant nationwide amplification of whatever theme Conservative Central Office dreams up, such as the wickedness of any Labour-SNP arrangement as though the Scots were some foreign enemy.

Nor can a genuine progressive party win out on its own against a corrupt political funding system and the conservative fear machine that enables the establishment last-minute to swing elections (as it did at both the Scottish referendum and the 2015 general election).

Blair-Mandelson sought to imitate these tactics, but only at the price of denuding Labour of all its fundamental social democratic (as opposed to neoliberal) principles in favour of an ideology that embraced its opponents.

The all-encompassing social movement that Labour needs to regain can only be formed around its trade union base with its near-seven million members. But it should also reach out to the whole range of civic society — the charities network, the CAB, the whole gamut of voluntary organisations, the churches, the Greens, and many others.

Harnessing their varied skills means listening to them and their needs and aspirations, not simply seeking to recruit them.

It means too reintroducing democracy into a movement where almost everything is now decided secretly at the top and transmitted downwards via speeches and text messages.

And it means weaving a commanding narrative for change that can inspire not only all these constituent parts, but their members and activists wit the determination to drive through the huge reform agenda that is now needed.