I USED to think the land tax campaigners I bumped into at numerous political conferences were cranks who spent their lifetimes whistling in the wind.

Now, incredibly, they are hailed as visionaries with a solution to Britain’s economic crisis – and the people Labour leader Ed Miliband should have on speed-dial.

For years, the autumn conference season wasn’t complete without voices piping up at the back of fringe meetings, demanding the government “tax land, not income”.

Sadly, I ignored these heartfelt pleas, like all the other journalists present and like all big-name politicians – until very recently.

I first noticed a shift when Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Business Secretary, called for taxes to be retargeted, in his celebrated “banker-bashing” speech at his party’s conference last September.

It was time to “shift the tax base to property and land which cannot run away and represent an extreme concentration of wealth,” Mr Cable said, making it a crucial test of achieving “fairness”.

Now you can hardly move for economists and think-tanks suggesting it is time for cash-strapped governments to look to the rich and their ring-fenced assets.

Their crucial point is that, in the globalised economy, it is depressingly easy for the rich – with their offshore trusts, pension pots and complicated company ownership structures – to avoid paying tax on income and profits.

One calculation is that £70bn is lost to tax evasion a year – not far short of the £81bn of public spending cuts being made.

The consequences for society are the shrinking public services and benefit-slashing we are now experiencing and an even-bigger gulf between rich and poor.

In contrast, just as you and I can’t dodge paying council tax, an annual land value tax on the market rental value of land would be easy to assess, cheap to collect and impossible to evade.

Economists view it as “the least bad tax”, because it does not depress wealth creation.

Moreover, landowners would face huge bills for accumulating land for property speculation – bringing that idle land back into use.

Don’t believe this would mean higher taxes. Campaigners have shown the average person will be no worse off – they will simply pay less income tax instead.

This shift to taxing property should be supported by both social democrats (it targets the rich) and white-knuckle capitalists (allowing children to inherit huge wealth robs them of the incentive to work hard).

But it should be most attractive to Mr Miliband, who is struggling to answer the question: “What is Labour for when the money runs out?”

So, what are you waiting for, Ed?

THEY say that practice makes perfect – so maybe the principle extends to prime ministers performing U-turns?

I ask because David Cameron walked onto the stickiest possible wicket in the Commons yesterday, yet he smashed the Labour leader’s attack to all corners of the park.

Question time followed screeching Uturns on the NHS revolution and shorter jail terms for guilty pleas – two in one week being quite something even for this increasingly shambolic government.

Mr Cameron has mastered the art of making retreat sound like the reasonable act of a “listening” government – while successfully prickling Mr Miliband for “weak leadership”.

Which is worrying for Labour.