Working class children born in the 50s, 60s and up to the late 70s owe a lot to the post-war Labour governments. Free health care, social housing, free university education, the expectation of a rising standard of living and dignified care for elderly and ill relatives.

Working class children born in the 90s and the first decade of the 21st century are likely not to feel so warm about the impact of New Labour on their lives. The pulverisation of the unions has destroyed the sense of collective power as an almost universally understood thing. On leaving home they won’t be able to find a house or flat that is not rented from a private landlord. If they get into university they are there to help its funding bid rather than to get an appropriate education and they will leave with a huge debt. Free healthcare is becoming a receding memory – visit your dentist for proof of that- care for the elderly is being passed onto very lowly paid staff working for private companies and there is the risk of catastrophic climate change always in the background.

Even New Labour has worked out that something has gone wrong. Alan Milburn has decided that the fault lies with the rich and the powerful who are busy protecting the plum jobs for their own kids. Milburn reckons that professions like law, medicine and journalism have a “closed shop mentality”. He reached this conclusion after working on a report called Fair Access to the Professions with a team that included some Tories.

There was a real dialogue. Milburn ended up agreeing with the Tories. “The Conservatives say that city academies should be extended in both primary and secondary schools.” He added “they also say, rightly, that the supply of education places could be opened up to greater competition, particularly in areas of underperformance.”

According to the BBC 75% of judges and 45% of senior civil servants are privately educated. This may seem like a blunt instrument but one way to reduce inequality would be to shut down all fee paying schools. Instead they could be opened to any child who lives within walking distance and the small class sizes and enhanced curricula they offer could be made available throughout the entire education system.

Milburn’s solution is much more neo-liberal than that. It all comes down to personal choice and opportunity. “What we have got to do is open up these opportunities so they are available for everybody.” It all comes down to a lack of aspiration on the part of working class families and while he accepts that informal methods of recruitment give privileged access to the already privileged all he can do is tut a bit.

This is what passes for radical progressive thinking in New Labour. For all those years when the likes of Mandelson were declaring that he was “intensely relaxed” about the wealth of the super rich the party has been presiding over the consolidation of the positions of the rich and powerful in British society. And even though the party’s own history offers a model of how it can positively change the life chances of millions of working class people all Milburn can offer is a rip off of a TV talent show’s motif.