The politics of envy isn't doing us any favours

So it might seem a little odd to want to stand up for 'them' being as they don't seem hard up.

But I'm getting fed up of this tendency to put down the people who happen to have done well for themselves.

For years, politics had become this dull grey mess where everyone wanted to occupy the centre ground.

Recently the party leaders have realised that we're not all the same and they're starting to revert to type: David Cameron's on the side of the millionaires (says Ed Miliband) while critics of Miliband would say he wants to turn the place into Cuba without the sunshine and rum.

As for Nick Clegg, well, he tries.

But we've had some pretty cack-handed attempts to start a sort of class warfare lately and it's started to wind me up.

The first was when it was front page news that Sir Richard Branson was now living on an island where he'd pay no income tax.

But ask yourself this: If you were a self-made billionaire with a choice between living on a Caribbean island where you can basically be on holiday all the time or living in a place where people singing out of tune consists of Saturday night entertainment, what would you do?

Because if it was me who had access to a transatlantic airline to take me back and forth whenever I felt like it, I'd probably have to get a waterproof cover for my iPhone.

Cleggers, who I'm sure means well, also wants to take away some of the universal benefits given to pensioners.

His argument is that someone like Lord Sugar, who is worth £800 million, does not need a free bus pass.

And he's probably right, Lord Sugar doesn't. Nor, incidentally, does his bus pass cost the taxpayer anything. If he isn't using his bus pass the transport authority isn't forking anything out to the bus companies for carrying him.

So taking away a bus pass from Lord Sugar (that's if he even applied for one, which he didn't), costs no more than a couple of quid in terms of printing and postage for the bit of plastic.

But what about all those OAPs who happened to have worked hard all their lives, paid their taxes all their lives and hardly asked for anything from anyone? They might occasionally fancy using one of the few things the state has ever actually given them. Do we begrudge them that?

Even then, those who have put away some money for their retirement still have to sell their homes to pay for their old age care, while others get it for free.

And I'm not saying I'd ever want a system where people who can't afford it don't get looked after. But where would we be without those who can pay covering the costs for everyone else?

It makes no sense bashing the likes of Sir Richard and Lord Sugar when the very fact that they've made a few bob, totally thanks to their own ingenuity in the business world incidentally, means that there's thousands of people who happen to have jobs working for them.

So by all means tighten the rules around the dodgy non-doms and the Jimmy Carr types who use every trick to pay as little tax as they can get away with if it means there's a bit more money in the kitty to build schools.

But the politics of envy is doing no-one any favours.

All it does is pitch us all into a race to the bottom, to abandon any aspirations we might have to make our lives better if our only reward at the end is an enormous bill and the contempt of our fellow man.

Keith Harrison is away.