The Sunday Times Rich List appeared just after the Archbishop of Canterbury called on Labour to scrap the Tory two-child benefit cap and Gordon Brown’s co-authored pamphlet on child poverty was published. The timings could be karma or coincidence. But they sure exposed the biggest and most divisive culture clash facing us today.
This celebration is, for some, validation of national greatness. In 2000, there were 26 billionaires in the UK, now there are more than 150. Our Prime Minister and his wife made £120m in 12 months. An aspirational couple deserve big praise. People grumbling about gross inequality and mass suffering are doing the country down. Those who don’t make it are unworthy, lazy, subhuman. As their numbers grow, the monied are projected as heroes, stars in an ever brighter and bigger firmament for us to look up to. Policies favouring this class are passed breezily through Parliament.
Defenders of this caste claim commoners don’t care or mind about Rishi Sunak and his fellow private jet travellers. The truth is they do mind, but have been rendered silent and fatalistic. Capitalists also jabber a lot about “trickle down effect”. I would refer them to the words of the American-Canadian economist, John Kenneth........