If socialism means building homes and getting the rich to pay their taxes, then bring on Red Ed

Remember: it wasn't right to buy that was celebrated at our Olympic opening ceremony, but the 'socialist' NHS

Ed Miliband addresses an audience in the Brooks Building of Manchester Metropolitan University on April 21, 2015 (AFP PHOTO / OLI SCARFFOLI SCARFF/AFP/Getty Images)

The spectre of “Red Ed” is haunting voters and commentators. Just today, the columnist Richard Littlejohn wrote a piece entitled "Trust Labour? I'd rather trust Jimmy Savile to babysit".

The argument for the status quo is that the alternative is just too scary. For the Tories, that’s all you need to know. Forget about 50,000 families being forced out of the capital and ignore the reality of benefit cuts; focus on the fear of Red Ed.

The phrase “dangerous socialist alliance” was used recently by Iain Duncan Smith: “With the trade union leadership also very Left-wing now, you have a dangerous socialist alliance in which the Scots hold the whip hand and the unions are the paymasters for the Labour Party...That is where the beating heart of Labour lies, in true socialism.”

This ring-wing rhetoric doesn't help us have an honest discussion about what socialism entails. Neither does it explain what's actually so bad about it.

Think about it: under Labour’s “socialist” plans, there’ll be more social housing for those who desperately need it. With moderate rent controls, landlords won’t be able to charge their tenants extortionate amounts. The 50p rate of tax will be reinstated, so the people with the most money aren’t handed more. Non-doms will be no more, and the government will clamp down on tax avoiders. Rail and energy prices will be frozen. All of these strike at the heart of many people’s anger at growing inequality, and the need to create a fairer society.

What’s more, one of the central tenets of all of the parties’ manifestos is the NHS, a creation of socialist ideas, and a bastion of our British identity. When the Olympics Opening Ceremony took place in 2012, what was celebrated? Not Thatcher's right to buy or the deregulation of the banking sector: it was the NHS, spelt out in lights for the world to see.

The people who fear socialism are the ones that have the most to lose. They’re the individuals who don’t want to see a systematic restructuring of society to help those at the bottom. To them, the choice is simple – spread enough anxiety and fear about redistributive policies to defeat them, or lose some of their cash.

It’s time the left started to stand up for socialism and began to show that it is not to be feared, but something to hope for. It's an ideology that will actually make society fairer. Which means that Ed can be as red as he wants, but he’ll still get my vote.