enough of this rampant inequity. According to a recent FT/Harris poll, huge worldwide majorities consider income inequality to be too great. The percentages against this global shift to the rich are remarkably consistent: 87 per cent in Germany consider income inequality to be too great, 76 per cent in Spain agree. Even in Britain 74 per cent of people believe the rich should be taxed more and the poor less. What is most striking is that 80 per cent of the Chinese concur.

Clearly there is a massive global revulsion at the new global super-class. The sense of injustice that is heightened by the fact the super-rich manipulate companies and nation states, creating a whole network of tax avoidance that means in practice they pay less than one per cent of their real income in tax. With over $11tr held in offshore tax havens, politicians are still taxing their own citizens heavily while climbing over each other to offer tax breaks and incentives to the super-rich who refuse to pay their fair share.

So extreme is the current situation that it is not foolish to speak of the proletarianisation

of the middle class. Indeed workers and the professional classes now have a common interest and that is changing the terms of the political and economic settlement such that they receive a greater reward for their labour.

The trouble is the governing class is still seduced by neo-liberalism – they cannot see that the vast majority of their citizens no longer want to live under a system that effectively impoverishes them for the benefit of a small cabal of owners and speculators. Even Warren Buffet has spoken of the rise of a new dynastic wealth that effectively dismantles meritocracy and destroys social mobility.

If governments do not react to the new reality of economic insecurity, they risk unprecedented social upheaval. Students of history know that revolutions occur when the middle classes make common cause with the workers. The middle classes now see themselves as wage slaves - and in the end slaves inevitably stage an uprising.