The top 25 per cent of full- time earners now receives 50 per cent of the wages."If the trend for more and more wealth to be concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people continues, Labour will not be able to redistribute much to the poor," Mr Gregg said. "But I see no plans to tackle the people at the top."There are other gaps. Trade union leaders did a deal with the Labour leadership before last year's conference. Give us a minimum wage, employment rights and the European Social Chapter, they said, and you can do what you want.

But, after the conference, in his CBI speech, Mr Blair said that he had no intention of implementing all social legislation coming out of Europe. Labour's health and constitutional reform plans remain vague and few would be surprised if it shifted further towards supporting grant-maintained schools.Yet the Liberal Democrats seem to offer certainty. They are committed to renationalising Railtrack; Labour is not. They will raise taxes on the wealthy, Labour won't say what it will do. They will raise standard- rate income tax to improve education; Labour cannot say where the money will come from. They support human rights and oppose harsh anti-crime policies; Jack Straw wants to clamp down on squeegee merchants.This does not mean they are more concerned with inequality than Labour.

Paddy Ashdown's Liberal Democrats can sometimes appear to see the poor as objects of pity and to be unhappy when they demand rights. Peter Hain, a former leader of the Young Liberals and now a left-wing Labour MP, argues that the Liberal Democrats' hostility to trade unions and their unwillingness to promote social justice by restricting the free market leaves them well to the right of Labour.The one big carrot the Liberal Democrats offer those who still believe in fundamental change is constitutional reform.Democratising the House of Lords, abolishing quangos and giving people some power to control their lives through local government are good democratic principles in themselves. Proportional representation, with the opportunities it brings for small parties, raises theprospect of a realignment of politics. Labour is committed to holding a referendum on PR but it is not clear if it will support change when and if it fulfils its promise.

Earlier this year Mr Blair said he was "unpersuaded" of the merits of reform.At present the Labour and Conservative parties are each coalitions, though each tries to hide the differences within them. Genuine public debate on serious issues is stamped on in the name of party unity - as Clare Short found when she dared to discuss the drugs problem.Proportional representation would force the deals between the factions to be made honestly, in the open and in front of the electorate. It would allow the Christian Democrats and English Nationalists in the Conservative Party to split away It would also allow Labour to split. The Blairists would probably remain the stronger force, but the rest could form what Britain does not now have, a genuinely left-of-centre party.. ON FRIDAY the Financial Times' influential Lex column laid into the German takeover laws. They were "deeply flawed", it said, and the column went on to attack a new code because it "does nothing to shake up the cosy relationship between German industry and banks".