THERESA May’s bid for the worker’s vote is one of the more cynical exercises in political cross-dressing. A right to worker representation on company boards – so long as your boss has the right to choose your representative. A year’s leave to care for sick relatives – provided you’re wealthy enough not to need to work for a living. The retention, for the time being, of workers’ rights that wouldn’t have been lost had it not been for Brexit.

Mrs May’s workers manifesto has even abandoned George Osborne’s promise of a £9 minimum wage by 2020. Instead, the National Minimum Wage will “rise with median earnings until 2022”. Yet, as the Bank of England has confirmed, those median earnings are actually falling again in real terms. Brilliant.

But if you’re reading this column you’re unlikely to be taken in by this crude exercise in Red Toryism. The message is directed at people who aren’t interested in politics and only casually read the headlines or hear them on TV. It is job done simply getting the word “workers” attached to Theresa May on the Sun’s front page. Conservative leaders have avoided using this class-loaded term for the last 40 years, preferring to talk of “employees” or claiming “we’re all in it together”.

The workers charter is part of a media strategy using key words to hook into the current wave of populist resentment against the elites that swept Donald Trump to office. “Strong and stable ... Brexit means Brexit ... less immigration ... more council houses ... fair deal for workers ... Corbyn chaos”. Brexit is being used as a lever to prise open areas of the country that have been immune to Conservatism since Margaret Thatcher. In Labour’s Northern English heartlands, many see Jeremy Corbyn as a metropolitan liberal interested only in gender equality and minority rights.

However, there’s a flaw in this cunning plan. Talking about workers’ rights is reframing the political debate in a way that should benefit the left. As they say in American politics: “don’t think of an elephant”. It’s impossible, because the moment you try not to think of an elephant its image pops into your head. Similarly, by using the language of workers rights, Theresa May is actually inviting voters to view politics in a left-wing frame. After all – what do you think of when you think of workers? It’s Labour, obviously; the words are synonymous. No one thinks of Conservatives building council houses. Worker representation in industry in countries like Germany is not seen as left-wing – but in British political discourse it is. As is giving workers more time off and better rights.

So, even as Theresa May is trying to seal the deal with low-income voters, she is giving salience to the kind of themes that are Labour property. Her rhetoric is confirmation that the right is on the defensive in UK politics.

Today, Mr Corbyn will unveil a rather more convincing workers manifesto, including 100,000 council homes; abolition of tuition fees in England and £6 billion a year for the NHS. These will be paid for by reversing cuts to corporation tax, increasing taxes on those earning over £80,000 and a financial transactions tax on speculative deals in the city. These are not far left policies any more. But Labour’s tragedy that it has a policy agenda very much in tune with the times, which it will be unable to deliver. This is because the civil war in the party has made Labour all but unelectable.The relentless pursuit of factional interests by both sides, even at election time, is something peculiar to Labour: you don’t see Tories or the SNP doing it. The former Labour MP Tom Harris makes a full-time job of trashing his leader on social media.

They are destroying a unique opportunity to change the direction of Westminster politics, and handing the future to their enemies. Pity the workers, being represented by this lot.