Disconnection (Part 2)

The biggest disconnect in our society now is surely the gaping chasm between the richest and the poorest. During the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, income inequality increased massively in the UK. The old post-war consensus was shattered, and the result was a society that went through dramatic upheavals and pain, in a way that is still seared onto the psyche of anyone who was around in that period.

And it is these upheavals that are important. Across countries, there is a broad correlation between higher levels of income inequality and higher levels of property crime, and murder. Societies which are more unequal are more dangerous.

I believe that what this shows is that these societies begin to fall apart, that different sections of that society become disconnected from each other. Because of this process, sections of society begin to psychologically and physically separate themselves. The poorest become chavs, the richest become fat cats, and both groups hold the other in contempt. In this way, the process accelerates.

So you would hope that a Labour government, one committed to reducing inequality, and producing a fairer society, would have begun the work of reversing the changes of the long Tory government of the 80s and 90s. But it turns out, they didn't. In fact, the levels of inequality got worse.

Income inequality is now greater than at any time since 1961.

Or, to put it another way, income inequality is at its highest level since records began.

So, society has become more unequal. Combined with this, it appears that social mobility, how easy it is for someone to rise up through society, or indeed to fall, hasn't changed since 1970. And this low level of social mobility is amongst the worst in any advanced nation.

If you're born poor, you're likely to stay poor. And with the income of the lowest 10% actually falling in real terms since 2005, you're likely to get poorer.

This can't be how we want our society to be, can it? Surely a world where the bottom 10% of society have an income of £147 a week, while the top 10% make do with £1,033 a week isn't right? When the poorest 20% see their income fall by 2.6% at the same time as the richest 20% see theirs rise by 3.3%, something must be wrong?

I'm sorry to step away from the gentle cultured arguments about the effect of economic strategies, to slip into the language of black and white, right and wrong. But this is a simple binary matter, it is a matter of right and wrong. There comes a point when the impact of the economic choices we make cease to be a matter for gentle discussion over brandy and cigars, and become a bigger issue, a more important issue. There comes a point where these decisions become moral decisions, because these arguments start to affect the very lives people get to live.

When the one of the best indicators of a child's future social position, wealth, educational attainment, health, longevity and is the amount of money their parents' earn, something is wrong.

Recently, Harriet Harman launched a new equalities bill. She said that as women in general lived longer than men, it showed something was wrong that the poorest women died earlier than the richest men - and so we had to work for equal pay across the genders. This is a laudable aim, but seems to be missing the point entirely - the problem is that you will die earlier if you are poor. The money you earn decides how long you will live.

Yes, this is the language of class warfare. But the casualties are all on one side.

(To be fair, also in this bill are proposals to impose on public authorities a duty to work to reduce class inequalities. But this will only affect public authorities, leaving the rest of society to get on with the work of increasing inequality. The measures are too weak, too little, and too late.)

And yet we all seem to try very hard not to acknowledge that, turning our heads, averting our gaze, closing our eyes. We want to believe that sop to middle class sensibilities that we live in a era of 'equality of opportunity', a meaningless phrase that the statistics on social mobility to be a lie. Some of us pretend we live in a meritocracy, but isn't it odd that merit seems to be hereditary?

We used to have a political party that would point this out. We used to have a party that wouldn't help everyone ignore the effects economic policy was having on the most vulnerable. We used to have a party that would have shouted from the rooftops about inequality rising to such obscene levels. We used to.

And that is the disconnect I want to talk about tomorrow.