John Hutton, Minister for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform is a man who seems destined to forever put his foot in it. He's going to tonight if he delivers a speech of which Polly Toynbee has seen an advance copy. He's going to say:

Rather than questioning whether huge salaries are morally justified, we should celebrate the fact that people can be enormously successful in this country. Rather than placing a cap on that success, we should be questioning why it is not available to more people.

As I've argued, the reason is simple: the gap between most and the so called enormously successful is now insurmountable for most in this country. It's even so for most businesses now when entities owned by non-doms have advantages those resident here will never get and multinationals like Tescos can exploit tax loopholes most solely UK bases enterprises will never enjoy.

In the circumstance it is just offensive that Hutton will argue that:

that child poverty can be abolished while people at the top are very wealthy. It is not only statistically possible - it is positively a good thing

This is never going to happen. It ignores all the evidence. Trickle down does not work. As Polly Toynbee puts it:

The only countries to abolish child poverty are also more equal, notably the Nordics. Britain's levels of poverty and inequality are no coincidence.

She's right. And as Brendan Barber puts it:

Alistair Darling has a pretty straightforward choice between poor children and the super-rich on Wednesday. It doesn't seem that hard to me.

It seems it is for John Hutton.