British politics is in need of another debate about equality. Three days before the election, Jeremy Paxman posed the Prime Minister one of his famously straight questions: Is it acceptable for the gap between rich and poor to widen? The answer was: It is acceptable for those people on lower incomes to have their incomes raised. It is unacceptable that theyre not given the chances. To me the key thing is not whether the gap between those who the person who earns the most in the country and the person who earns the least is distant or not.
That was about as far as Mr Paxman got. In some ways the answer was perfectly acceptable. Most governments act to raise the income of the very poorest. The Labour Party has a clear agenda of improving the opportunities of the disadvantaged. And no one of sense thinks that driving the richest person into exile, and thereby closing the gap between the richest and poorest individuals, improves anyones welfare. The Prime Minister made it perfectly clear that he was far more concerned about the condition of the disadvantaged than with the affluence of the wealthy. This was a clear and unambiguous statement that there is no place in his party for the politics of envy. So should we care about relative poverty at all?
This is no small matter for the Left in Britain, or for the Labour Party in particular. The Labour Party works hard to identify itself with equality as a value. But the nature of its commitment never mind the exact formulae of the vows has always been in dispute. The old Clause IV, despite existing under strain for many years, stated one of the Partys aims as the most equitable distribution of the fruits of industry. The new version talks of a just society, which judges its strength by the condition of the weak as much as the strong [and] promotes equality of opportunity. The 2001 manifesto talks about widening the winners circle.
This issue is not about a few people at the very extremes of the income distribution: we are talking about millions of people at either end of the spectrum, from richest to poorest. Whilst wealth and poverty are not straightforward concepts, we could at least proceed on the basis that the rich are those with some combination of high income, significant wealth and good access to opportunities such as education and employment. The poor often suffer on all three counts.
Roughly ten per cent of households in the UK make use of private health care or private education for their children. The top twenty per cent earn around five times as much on average as the bottom twenty per cent. The top ten per cent own half of all marketable wealth. The bottom ten per cent own, effectively, none of it. The question asked of the Prime Minister was thus about two very large categories of people. It is revealing that his answer was about the poor on the one hand and the richest individual on the other: a very different thing, but clearly much easier to address and far less electorally sensitive.
Equality of outcome to equality of opportunity
It is a traditional attack from right-of-centre political parties that their opponents want to level down. But the Left in Britain has responded by abandoning any talk of even levelling up on Crosslands model. Equality of outcome is dead, and in its place we have equality of opportunity. But it is usually far from clear exactly what this means. Indeed, equality of opportunity is sometimes of dubious value to those who enjoy it: who wants a fair fight with Mike Tyson? Meritocracy is certainly a better system than feudalism, but it clearly comes in many different varieties.
The imprecation, Dont worry about the rich, concern yourself about the poor is unsatisfactory in many ways. Take three for example. First, the existence of massive and highly visible disparities causes widespread unhappiness. This is felt not just by those at the bottom of the pile, but also by those who are moderately successful whilst miserably aspirant, and perhaps also by those who are fearful of relative downward mobility. Moderate success is not enough when there are designer labels to buy, and whilst the middle classes do not live in fear of the workhouse, the world is such as to make rather painful distinctions between those who are getting on and those who are merely going on.
These considerations cannot be dismissed as mere envy, because as our political leaders repeatedly remind us, it is natural for people to want the best for themselves and their children. As inequalities expand, the best recedes from the grasp, but not the sight, of those left behind.
Second, the existence of really big inequalities makes for a less cohesive, coherent society. Whilst there is little evidence yet in the UK of gated communities on the US model, the affluent here unquestionably corral themselves into spaces policed by the requirement of the right resources. One need only walk past the shops and bars of any large city to see this in action: social segregation on the basis of relative affluence is a fundamental fact of modern life.
Third, affluence changes the odds for those in its proximity, particularly for family members. The best examples are the children of the wealthy, who are likely to benefit from both a high quality educational environment and significant financial assistance in early adult life. Inequalities tend to be self-reinforcing, with parents passing on their advantages to their children. And it is precisely relative inequalities that allow the children of the wealthy to acquire the abilities, which lead them to triumph in the subsequent competitive world.
The need for genuine debate
So where do we go from here? The first requirement is for a genuine debate about equality. The issues affect people right across society, they are central to the Lefts conception of itself and its future political programme, and they are inextricable from questions about equality of opportunity. In a pre-election period there is a natural tendency for the political parties to avoid philosophically difficult issues. The Labour Party has expended enormous energy in characterising the Conservative Party as an organisation determined to entrench privilege. The cost of this has been a severe lack of public clarity about its own ideas of equality of opportunity. If the Labour Party is to abandon all hope of addressing relative inequalities, then it had better not do so lightly, or through simple carelessness.
What then, if we decided that we should in fact try to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor, or a least try to prevent it from widening? Is this a hopeless enterprise? Or is it, perhaps, even implied by some of Labours other targets, such as those to reduce child poverty by one-quarter by 2004, to halve it by the end of the decade and abolish it within 20 years? It is hard to see how child poverty can really be abolished without ending parental poverty also. Remember that poverty is currently defined as half of average household income, and the implications become startling. So, rather than abandoning concern for relative inequalities, should Labour be trying to build consent for a programme to which it is already committed?
There is certainly not space in such a short essay as this to discuss how relative inequalities might be tackled. But perhaps we can take comfort that it might be possible, and not necessarily too painful, from our near neighbours in Europe. The relative poverty rate in the Netherlands is nearly half that of the UK, and the child poverty rate is lower still. The spread of their income distribution is significantly narrower than ours. Now remember that the Netherlands is also significantly wealthier in terms of GDP per head than the UK, and is recognised as one of the most business-friendly environments in the world. Is it time for The Labour Party to avail itself of a little Dutch courage?
