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Even before the crash, let alone the current expenses sleaze, there was abundant evidence that all was not well with British society. Rising per capita income had failed to improve people's sense of well-being.

Day after torrid day MPs' expenses are dominating the front pages.
Each entry, from the claim for a bath plug (Labour) to a hanging
chandelier (Tory), arousing the ire of the public. The most fury is reserved for the practice of 'flipping' - the tactic of designating second homes so that MPs can claim more allowances. The whole (unfairly as some members have behaved honourably) of the political class is now held in contempt.

Labour politics changed when the Government was told that the banking system was at risk of meltdown. Now no one should be under any illusions about neo-liberalism. Labour's political opponents are thrashing around for any excuse to avoid the obvious - and the Government is letting them get away with it. But fact is that the economic model that shaped the world for the past three decades has become unsustainable.

On 20 March 2003, the invasion of Iraq began. For a brief moment it seemed to confirm the absolute supremacy of the USA and its neo-liberal crusade. The war - illegal, corrupt, founded on lies and prosecuted at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives - delivered what its authors promised: shock and awe.

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my dear and noble friend Lord Eatwell on initiating this debate and I also congratulate him on his speech. I start, as he did, with a quote.

In Washington at least, there has been a genuine regime change for the better. The arrival of Barack Obama in the White House provides the opportunity for a renewal of the progressive tradition in American politics, although it does not make it a certainty.

It is ironic that the 45 per cent tax rate for 2011 has been hailed as the end of "new" Labour when it is nothing of the kind. It is little more than window-dressing - trivial in effect and three years too late to have much impact.

Compass has welcomed plans due to be announced in the Pre-Budget Report to reduce VAT and to introduce a new top rate of tax on the super-rich. A recent letter to The Sunday Telegraph co-ordinated by Compass specifically called on the government to pursue similar fiscal measures in the economic downturn and Compass has long advocated a New Political Economy.