Real politics is back: Out with the bland easy choices

So it's almost over. Thank bloomin' goodness (you said that - I'm not supposed to have opinions).

So what have we learned - other than that Jeremy Corbyn would still work on his allotment if he enters No.10 and that Theresa May's naughtiest act was trespassing in a wheat field (can you imagine what Boris Johnson would say if he truthfully told us the naughtiest thing he has ever done?!).

Well what many of us think of as real politics is back.

What do I mean by that?

Well from the moment Labour lost the 1992 general election, and especially after Tony Blair was elected the party's leader in 1994, mainstream politics became a fairly bland affair.

The main parties scrambled around in the centre ground trying to persuade us they had the best managers. And because Blair and Gordon were the towering performers and political intellects of their generation, they dominated the field for well over a decade - and even set the tone for how Cameron and Osborne managed the Tory Party.

It was all about how best to share out the fruits of a growing economy. It was the politics of easy choices, because no mainstream party leader dared say that in a fair society the wealthy should pay considerably more to help the under-privileged and disadvantaged.

Talking about the need for tax rises was political suicide, for years.

When Labour finally created a new top rate of tax after the 2008 crisis, it was projected as an emergency measure that could theoretically be abolished once economic growth was back on track.

So probably the most significant phenomenon of this election is that Labour's popularity seems to have increased very considerably indeed, despite proposing a full £49bn of tax rises - with all but a fraction coming from businesses and the top 5 percent of earners.

It is an explicit programme of taxing the rich to pay for better public services - which disproportionately help the poorest.

It is old fashioned "redistribution" - from haves to have-nots - rather than Blairite and Cameroon "distribution" of the fruits of growth to all.

Now it is perfectly possible to argue about whether Labour would raise as much as it needs without increasing taxes paid by the rest of the population - and the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies says it would not.

And it is also reasonable to point out that Labour is being disingenuous in claiming that raised business taxes don't impose costs on all of us, as companies are likely to respond to increases in their tax burden by paying their employees less or pushing up prices.

But the politics of what it has done - winning broad national support for a significant expansion of the state, a major boost to public services financed by substantial tax rises - represents a major turning point in modern political history.

And to be clear, this will be so even if Labour loses, so long as it's share of the vote rises very considerably from what it achieved in 2015 - which seems highly likely.

If you need proof that this is - to coin the cliche- a watershed, it is that Theresa May has not dared attack Labour's proposal to increase taxes for the richest - and has instead questioned whether its tax raids would end there.

The big point is that if Labour loses it will not be because it wants to tax the rich to help the poor, but despite its new socialism.