{"id":9909,"date":"2023-10-23T19:20:27","date_gmt":"2023-10-23T19:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/?p=9909"},"modified":"2023-10-23T19:20:27","modified_gmt":"2023-10-23T19:20:27","slug":"british-society-is-heading-for-levelling-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/?p=9909","title":{"rendered":"British society is heading for levelling down"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his new book \u201cShattered Nation: Inequality and the Geography of a Failing State<\/a>\u201d, Danny Dorling paints a bleak picture of life for many UK citizens today. Standards of living are falling across the country, yet policy-makers from across the political spectrum have failed to put forward effective measures to reverse this decline. In this Q&A with Bea White, he explains why radical change may be inevitable for a country that has run out of both money and options.<\/p>\n

There is a perception that the shift to a Labour government in 1997 marked a sea change in British politics and efforts to make society fairer. But you argue that there was actually considerable ideological consensus between the New Labour and the Conservative government which preceded it. What is the evidence for this?<\/p>\n

We had huge hope at first and Labour initially had a lot of credibility in the late 1990s. New Labour did do some good things \u2013 opening up to migration was a massive boost, and they increased health spending and spent more money on social housing.<\/p>\n

It was only when I looked at the Gini coefficient of income inequality<\/a> worked out by the OECD that I saw it hadn\u2019t moved by more than 1 per cent in any year for 20 years. Our inequality was at a level where we managed to beat every other country in Western Europe. Now Bulgaria is the only country that\u2019s more unequal than us.<\/p>\n

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The OECD ranking of countries by income inequality in October 2023. Source: https:\/\/data.oecd.org\/inequality\/income-inequality.htm<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

So they didn\u2019t change inequality. And it\u2019s really only in hindsight that you look back see actually that was a massive failure. They wanted to seem competent. The technocrats took over. They wanted to grow the City of London \u2013 that was all about trickle down as the policy. The idea was the city gets bigger, so then we\u2019ll have more Sure Start centres, and we\u2019ll build brand new Academy schools. Brilliant. They built these schools in the poorest parts of town. It was great, but then suddenly we found that almost all secondary schools and universities had been privatised.<\/p>\n

It was Labour that brought in \u00a31000 a year tuition fees, and then raised it to 3000. It was Labour who made a deal that led to it becoming \u00a39000 a year under the Conservatives. So they were absolutely in cahoots ideologically then, and they were in 1997 it just wasn\u2019t quite as obvious.<\/p>\n

When Thatcher was asked about her greatest achievement, she said \u201cNew Labour\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

What Tony Blair and Gordon Brown did by moving Labour rightwards is that they pushed the Tories way over to the right. It would have taken a super superhuman effort and ability and knowledge to turn around the biggest rise in European inequality which occurred under Thatcher. But when Margaret Thatcher was asked about her greatest achievement, she said \u201cNew Labour\u201d.<\/p>\n

You explain that Britain is an outlier in terms of its inequality levels across the board, in comparison to its neighbours but also in contrast to global trends. If British people are aware of this, why do they tolerate it?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think that people are aware of it. People do not know the real rate of child poverty, that the proportion of children who are poor in the southeast of England, that\u2019s excluding London, is higher than Scotland. Hardly anybody is aware that that children in Scotland are less likely to be poor by the government\u2019s official measure than those in the richest part of England (and that\u2019s mainly something that occurred under New Labour). Hardly anybody knows that that there are more poor families per head in the southeast. In Oxford it is one third. We have babies being washed in cold water in now because people haven\u2019t had their boiler on for 18 months. Unbelievable.<\/p>\n

We think it\u2019s inevitable. We think \u201cOf course we\u2019ve got to have retirement at age of 68, 69 or 70, they must be mad in France\u201d or \u201cWe can\u2019t possibly let in refugees like they let it in Germany.\u201d We\u2019ve become more American and less European in our thinking. Even if there is awareness, it\u2019s just seen as pie in the sky.<\/p>\n

You mention the disparity between England and Scotland. What is the impact of inequality on devolution and campaigns for it to be taken further?<\/p>\n

The SNP [Scottish National Party] are criticised for not looking after public services enough, but they can only do that if they can raise taxes, by more than they are currently allowed to raise them. If you want to have a better housing system in Scotland, you can\u2019t do that with some of the lowest taxes for people who are earning two or three times the average income. By low I mean lower than the take tax in other similar European countries on high earners. So it leads to pressure for greater devolution; it pushes towards more independent powers.<\/p>\n

They and we are running out of money now in the UK. We can\u2019t borrow more, we can\u2019t tax it, we can\u2019t print it because then the cost of food will go up too much. So we\u2019re going to turn around to Scotland and tell them they\u2019re going to have less money to spend in future. Labour have retaken a seat to Rutherglen, which they held at every election, apart from the last one, and now they think they\u2019re going to sweep across Scotland. But things are different in Scotland now.<\/p>\n

When it comes to addressing the spatial inequalities across the UK, do you think the Levelling Up agenda and its policies are taking an effective approach?<\/p>\n

Well, at least we\u2019re talking about it. But nothing that is currently being planned is going to make things more level.<\/p>\n

In 2015, George Osborne promised that if we followed his economic plan we would be the richest country per capita on the planet by 2030, apart from a few tiny oil states. When Boris [Johnson] resigned, he made almost exactly the same promise, but slightly watered down. At the start of last summer, [Keir] Starmer makes the same promise, but only among the G7 countries. So we are promised the sunlit uplands every time, but it\u2019s never as good as the last promise. And we are never going to get there given what\u2019s happened to the country.<\/p>\n

There comes a point when you can only tax the rich, otherwise people will starve.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

So the most likely scenario is levelling down, because when the money runs out, you\u2019re going to have to tax people at the top more. There comes a point when you can only tax the rich, otherwise people will starve. So we\u2019re going to level, but it\u2019s not up!<\/p>\n

In higher education, we\u2019ve seen increasing pressure on institutions from industrial action. How do you view these campaigns?<\/p>\n

UCU, my union was arguing that people like me \u2013 a well-paid university professor needed a higher percentage increase than what we\u2019re being offered because it\u2019s still below inflation. They lost their dispute and I think that\u2019s good news. It essentially means you can\u2019t send your children to a private school, which the majority of academics in Oxford do. Or you can, but you\u2019re going to have to ask more money from the grandparents.<\/p>\n

It may be painful, but it\u2019s actually levelling and it\u2019s levelling down. The smallest pay increases are going to the highest paid people. My salary could go down by 10 per cent four times before life will get really difficult and I\u2019ll still be much richer than most people in Oxford after that.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve run out of money and the rich like me are going to have to become more normal. And the irony is this: It\u2019s not [Jeremy] Corbyn doing this, it\u2019s [Rishi] Sunak.<\/p>\n

At the recent party conferences we saw the parties setting out their stalls towards the general election. Did you see indications that there will be policy proposals that might effectively address the issues you raise?<\/p>\n

We\u2019re a position now where we\u2019re forced to address them \u2013 sterling has become a dangerous currency and there\u2019s a real risk of the country going bankrupt.<\/p>\n

The last time this happened was during World War One \u2013 when the war went on for so long that we had to raise money, and then we began to raise it from the rich as an emergency taxation that never went away. And then we became more and more equal, with levelling down for everybody.<\/p>\n

What happened in the past was that \u2013 when the middle classes couldn\u2019t afford to pay the doctor in the 1930s \u2013 that\u2019s when a health service became a viable idea. We got comprehensives when the middle class could no longer afford to go private. Progressive things like the Health Service and comprehensive education have been driven by the middle class in their self-interest for their children because they\u2019re not as rich as they were before. And it tends to be the middle class who get what they want.<\/p>\n

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Rishi Sunak promoting the Levelling Up agenda in 2021<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting Sunak has come out fighting on the anti-environment stuff. It wouldn\u2019t take much for them to introduce some progressive policies \u2013 like a Sovereign Wealth Levy as an emergency measure on income over a certain amount. They could introduce tax policies that show a different ethos, even if they don\u2019t raise much money.<\/p>\n

What will [Keir] Starmer and [Rachel] Reeves do then, are they going to follow suit? Is Labour going to be the party of lower taxes for the rich?<\/p>\n

And the policy that you can\u2019t buy cigarettes from 14 onwards \u2013 that\u2019s a that\u2019s a nanny state policy. And it\u2019s Sunak\u2019s flagship policy!<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t become a society where people care for each other overnight.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There\u2019s a danger we could become more unequal. And you don\u2019t become a society where people care for each other overnight. Your children have to go to the same schools. It takes about two or three generations. When society becomes really unequal, we no longer think about each other as human beings. The lower orders are lower orders again. We need a shift in moral compass, decency, how people should be treated and thought about. And it happened before the question is: are we on the edge of it beginning again?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For a PDF of this article and where it was originally published click here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his new book \u201cShattered Nation: Inequality and the Geography of a Failing State\u201d, Danny Dorling paints a bleak picture of life for many UK citizens today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9905,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9909"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9911,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9909\/revisions\/9911"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}