During a speech due to be given later on Thursday in Bedford, Miliband will say the government’s approach is flawed in that it appears to hope wealth will “trickle down” from the rich to the rest of the country, reports the BBC.

The tax rate for high earners will be cut from 50p to 45p later this year, as announced in last year’s Budget. The move will affect some 300,000 additional rate taxpayers.

This year’s Budget will take place on 20 March.

“We need very successful entrepreneurs in Britain, making profits, being rewarded,” Miliband is due to say. “But we can’t succeed as a country just by hoping wealth will trickle down from those at the top to everyone else. Our economy won’t turn around that way.”

Miliband will criticise the government’s economic policy as a “race to the bottom in wages and skills”, rewarding those at the top while “squeezing” everyone else.

“People in Britain are putting in the hours – doing the shifts – as never before. But something has changed in the last few years.

“There’s less chance of promotion, less chance of a pay rise and, at the same time, prices just go up and up and up: petrol for the car, tickets for the train, childcare for the kids, deposits for a first home.

“The ‘squeezed middle’ has never been so squeezed – and it looks like it will be that for years to come. It’s no wonder our economy isn’t growing when people can’t afford to buy the things that British businesses try to sell.”