The left needs says to sharpen its arguments for a fairer and more transparent society, argues Sunder Katwala
“It isn’t my burning ambition to make sure that David Beckham earns more money” was Tony Blair’s reason for ducking Jeremy Paxman’s probing about whether the wealth gap mattered in the 2001 general election campaign.
“New” Labour believed that “permission” to help the poor depended on there being no hint of a “politics of envy” towards the rich. The Tory modernisers have followed suit, as Oliver Letwin and David Willetts talk about inequality and accept that poverty is relative while stressing they care about the gap between the bottom and the middle in our society.
Yet new Fabian Society research conducted by Tim Horton and Louise Bamfield and published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation stands much of the conventional wisdom about public attitudes on its head.
There is wide public support for a much tougher challenge to runaway inequality at the top than has been suggested, while support to help the poor is more difficult to gauge.
The “traditional egalitarian” approach, which thinks of fairness primarily in terms of need and so believes strongly in redistributing from the rich to the poor, is a minority position – although it is endorsed by 22 per cent of the electorate. A politics of equality needs to form broader alliances, although it must encourage this traditional Tribuneite base to be part of them.
Equally important, only 20 per cent of the public hold the “traditional free market’” position, which believes that the poor and the rich have got what they deserve. These people are strong supporters of the Thatcherite view that more inequality would be fairer, in terms of rewarding effort, and necessary to promote prosperity. However, right-wing ideas such as flat taxes and tax cuts to promote incentives for high earners will be a hard sell in the current climate.
If fewer than half of us are partisans in the traditional battle between left and right, the two other clusters of opinion will have a decisive impact. Those in the “angry middle”, who make up 26 per cent of the population, believe they are the victim of “free-riding” at both the top and the bottom. They regard welfare recipients in a punitive, stereotypical way. But what has been overlooked is how angry this Daily Mail demographic is about excess at the top, too.
Thirty-one per cent of the population are “post-ideological liberals”. They have fairly neutral attitudes towards both rich and poor. They can support redistribution on pragmatic grounds. And they respond to evidence of the link between inequality and social problems, such as crime.
Clearly, politics is about changing opinions and challenging stereotypes. The Fabian research also shows several ways in which working with the grain of public opinion could unlock stronger public support for tackling inequality.
The left treads warily when it comes to the “angry middle”. The success of Thatcherism was to link the interests of the top and middle against the poor, using stereotypes of an underclass.
But the middle remains angry. The rewards were concentrated at the top, while insecurity increased in the middle. And the real Middle Britain is a long way from the narrow mythology of “Middle England” of the 1990s. Hence the bizarre spectacle of media condemnation of Labour for abandoning the centre-ground, when its new 50p tax rate on top earners has 68 per cent public support.
An effective politics of equality has to address the middle. Our researchers found that almost everybody placed themselves close to the “middle”, even if they were highly affluent or struggling. Those close to the bottom of the income scale talked about the poor as someone else.
A coalition of the poor and the middle depends on having much more to say about inequality at the top. The Government’s idea of “progressive universalism” is a good one. But the language of responsibility has been aimed only at the poor. Crackdowns on benefits have increased stereotypes, while the scale of tax avoidance is unknown.
The popular belief in “fair inequality” when merited by effort might sound like a barrier, but it could be used to support a push for greater equality. The public broadly supports income differentials in the range of 10:1 or 15:1, but not those of 100:1 and even 500:1 and more. “Fair inequality” would be much less inequality than we have now. And fair inequality depends on fair chances. However, little effort has gone into public arguments about why opportunities are so unequal in modern Britain.
People are as interested in how differences come about as in how much inequality has resulted. There is anger when the rules for top pay and bonuses bear no resemblance to how wages are decided in the real world. There is enormous public support for transparency and employee representation to break up cosy remuneration committees.
The left has spent decades worrying about the undeserving poor – often with good reason. But it could get quite a long way by ensuring a much sharper argument about scrutinising the differences between the deserving and undeserving rich. l
Sunder Katwala is general secretary of the Fabian Society. Understanding attitudes to tackling economic inequality by Tim Horton and Louise Bamfield is available from jrf.org.uk
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