The Tories' bid to crush collective action and defund their poorer rivals proves they’re betting on money having the upper hand over people

In the five years up to the election, the newly self-styled “party of the workers” raised a fifth of its record £110million war chest from the donations of just 27 men.

All these individuals were highlighted in this year’s Sunday Times Rich List, which showed the fortunes of the wealthiest 1% of Britons had doubled since 2010.

All are hedge fund managers, City speculators whose industry has saved £145million thanks to David Cameron’s abolition of a little-known investment tax in 2013.

Now the Conservatives, having been helped by a greedy and grateful few to amass £15million more than Labour and win the election, are going to war with their defeated rival’s main source of funding: the 6p-a-week contribution by 2.8million members of 15 affiliated trade unions.

The Tories announced in yesterday’s Queen’s Speech, a jarring festival of pomp and austerity, that union members will have to opt in rather than out of political levies.

The change is likely to lead to a big drop in income for Labour, which between May 2010 and December 2015 was given £48.6million by unions, roughly half its income (or the same proportion of income that the Conservatives receive from City donors).

On top of this, at a time when industrial action is at an all-time low, the Tories have promised to further erode worker rights with a wave of new anti-strike laws.

Most notably, the government, which received the votes of just 24% of the electorate, will rule that unions representing teachers, firefighters, transport and NHS workers will need the support of at least 40% of all members - and not just a simple majority of those who vote - in order to strike.

Other unions, such as the National Union of Journalists that I am a member of, will require a minimum turnout of 50% in future ballots.

This is not just anti-democratic and authoritarian. It will also damage the living standards of the majority of people, including those who refuse to join a union.

Weakening the rights of workers to take collective action creates an army of cheap labour who are far less able to bargain for better wages while allowing bosses’ pay to soar at their employees’ expense.

The chart linked to here shows how the share of income going to the top 10% of earners has risen at almost the same rate as the fall in union membership since 1980.

And those countries with more unionised workforces tend to have higher average pay.

For example, in Sweden, where 70% of employees are in unions, the average annual salary after tax (and bare in mind they pay a lot more than Britons do so that they can fund better services) is 952 euros of £657 greater than in the UK, where membership is just 26%.

The Conservatives’ latest assault on the labour movement – coming 18 years after they were last able to govern alone - shows how they’re betting that money will gain an even bigger upper hand over people.

Sadly, British lower and middle earners, whose incomes have declined by the third highest rate in the EU since the crash, have been conned into opposing collective action by a sustained Tory trumpeting of the idea of “individual rights”.

And this sounds like a jolly good thing until you realise that most of us are pretty powerless on our own.

The only individuals whose rights are likely to be bolstered by the Tories - a party of the rich, by the rich and for the rich - are those who already own the wealth, not you.

Yet, for a party as rich and well-connected as the Conservatives, their attack on already eroded workers’ rights, a badly defeated Labour Party and weakened unions also shows they still fear the power people have when they stand together and refuse to be divided.

And, for those of us with a burning sense of injustice at the grotesque inequality in our midst, here lies a flickering flame of hope.