I’d say there’s a risk here of putting a lot of effort into reforms which a) would struggle to get sufficient support even if the left were in the ascendant, b) would be easily rolled back a few years down the line and c) would be hopelessly inadequate even if they were brought in.

Those issues you list are only partially matters of income and I can’t see that they’ll ever be solved by tackling them through income-related measures. Underlying them all are derelict laws of ownership which deny the majority of the population a fair share in our countries’ natural resources, laws which are indefensible but which the establishment can safely ignore as long as reformers focus on simply trying to stretch the boundaries of the current system. We won’t build a fair society by piling up additional layers of law in order to mitigate the ill-effects of dysfunctional older laws. At some point we will have to address the fundamental flaws.

Which is not to say that tax doesn’t help create inequality. By requiring payment of taxes in money, rather than in labour, the state colludes in keeping the poor subservient – because it is effectively obliging people to obtain money from others who have no obligation to part with it – and that subservience is a significant factor underlying in-work poverty and insecure work. So, for me, a radical restructuring of the tax system would start with recognising that it is iniquitous for the state to demand taxes in a form which people have no natural capacity to supply.

I can see the arguments for doing whatever is possible within the current system to improve things, but, if you’re arguing for ‘a real restructuring’ of the system, I think you need to start from a vision of where you want to end up. To my mind, the tax system exists in order to match the contributions that individuals can reasonably be expected to make, to the cost of providing the services that the public can reasonably expect government to supply. In a healthy society, that’s all it should do and treating it as a method of redistribution will distort that function.