I share that sentiment, while still recognising for socialists, class politics have never been off the agenda. Who can deny this, as we witness the failure, indeed the refusal of New Labour (Prescott included) to tackle one of the products of that class system - inequalities of wealth and income. It's as wide now as it was under the Tories.

Tony Blair was once asked by Jeremy Paxman whether "an individual can earn too much money?" He replied, "I don't, really..." This sentiment has also been expressed by his one-time mouth piece, Peter Mandelson, who unashamedly admitted that, "we are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich."

Paxman also asked Blair, on approximately eight occasions, the linked question of whether it is acceptable for the gap between the rich and the poor to widen. He continually refused to answer the question that generations of socialists had taken for granted - that an integral part of our philosophy, was a commitment to the redistribution of wealth and income. What could be fairer?

It is difficult to argue against that, when it is predicted that in bonuses alone, Michael Spencer of Intercapital and Crispin Odey of Odey Asset Management are expected to receive £5m and £8.8m respectively. Meanwhile, Philip Green of Arcadia, and his family, have just received a dividend of £1.1bn, but still he sees nothing wrong in telling his workers they will have to take a pension cut, work longer or pay more into the fund. Yet these and many more examples are all acceptable in Blair's Britain. Meanwhile, millions of our working population have to exist on the minimum wage of £5.05 per hour.

Quite ironically, the Tory spokesperson Oliver Letwin has recently accepted that it should be an aim to narrow the gap between rich and poor, that we should redistribute money. He added, "Now before anyone poses the question, I don't believe the Tories would carry out that commitment, but neither will New Labour." I have to remind Mr Prescott that if he is serious about fighting the class war then the massive disparities of wealth must be eradicated and only then will New Labour relinquish the role as a party of "big business".

They could take one very small step down this road, by increasing the higher tax rate to 50% for those earning in excess of £100,000 per year. This would raise an additional £4.8bn a year.

This could be followed by another moderate step, of reducing our defence spending to the average of other Western European Nato countries, saving us a total of £7.3bn a year. Of course, we know they won't carry out those cuts, especially as seems likely from the utterances of a defence spokesman, that the Government is to embark on a new generation of even deadlier nuclear weapons.

Yet, if one can assume that they carried out those tax increases on the "filthy rich", together with the defence cuts, then the Government would have an additional £12.1bn each year to spend on our public services and meeting the needs of the poorest in our society.

If New Labour are unwilling to conduct their "class" politics through a more progressive tax system, then perhaps they could consider beginning to achieve this end by bringing back into public ownership those industries that were privatised under the Tories. I am sure that the cry from New Labour and that born-again class warrior, John Prescott, would be that we could not afford to buy them back into public ownership.

Why not? To quote one example, if they decided to bring the railways back into public ownership, the price should take into account the £16.219bn (real terms in 2003-04 prices) the private owners have received in subsidies since 1996-97. Additionally, of the £30.739bn investment since privatisation, a massive amount of this also came from the public purse. One then also needs to take into account the scandalously low price at which the industry was privatised, compared to the market value at that time.

The difference between its present market value and all the public benefits which the private rail companies have received would be the amount they would be compensated today if the industry is brought back into public ownership.

They would still remind us, that the railways were privatised by the Tories. Yet Blair, in Opposition promised that "there will be a publicly owned and publicly accountable railway system under a Labour Government." Not only has he failed to meet this promise, but New Labour has part privatised the London Underground, providing the private profiteers with another £2m weekly windfall. The fact is, New Labour no longer believes in public ownership and services.

Yet I suspect, with all of Prescott's evocative language, the extent of his class politics is directing a few jibes at David Cameron because of his privileged background and in particular, his education at Eton.

There are problems for both New Labour and Prescott if they concentrate on this line of attack, because Blair is also a product of a very privileged private school education.

Prescott could, of course, prove me wrong by announcing that his opposition isn't just to Cameron, but to private schools and that he is willing to apply his class politics, to a class issue - to meet the old socialist demand of the abolition of the privileged system of private education.

This would, to say the least, surprise me, because Prescott is just as much New Labour as Blair and Gordon Brown, and in their years in office they have not even had the courage to withdraw the charitable status, and the tax benefits which follow, from these private schools.

Sadly, none of this will happen, because when creating New Labour, this involved not just a change of name, but also a new party, dumping all our traditions and values which attracted so many generations to our banner.

Llew Smith is the former MP for Blaenau Gwent