Can reversing inequalities revive politics?

“A democracy where every vote is equal co-exists with a marketplace in which every pound is equal.” This might sound strange, said Prospect Editor Tom Clark, but it has been the consensus for a long time. Clark was chairing a lively British Academy debate entitled “Can reversing inequalities revive politics?”, held on 19th October. While there has always been a remarkable amount of inequality, recently there has been a feeling that it has begun to corrode parliamentary democracy.

Colin Crouch, Professor Emeritus at the University of Warwick, argued that liberal democracy and capitalism depend on something that is impossible: the separation of resources that can be used politically and resources that can be used economically. Both are supposed not to interfere with one another but in practice, we know, “it doesn’t work like that.” There are ways, said Crouch, to manage the tension: rules limiting how economic resources can be used politically, for example, which we have in Europe.

One example of how inequality affects democracy is through taxation. Over the years, taxes on the rich have declined sharply. You can reverse this trend but it requires political will. And given, in Crouch’s words, “the transferability of political and economic resources,” rich people can donate to political parties and get greater access to decision makers. Therefore “inequality reinforces itself.” This situation threatens formal democracy in this country.

Clark asked Crouch whether, rather than bothering about the more difficult issue of inequality, we could instead restrict the political use of wealth. Crouch agreed but then cited the curious instance of the 2014 Lobbying Act. Charities and other groups are affected by the restrictions of this legislation but not, for example, supermarkets, which are not lobbies—at least in theory. So the playing field is skewed.

Fraser Nelson, Editor of The Spectator, began his contribution by urging his audience to subscribe to Prospect (thanks Fraser!). He went on to challenge the contention that inequality is getting worse in the UK. Since John Major became prime minister 25 years ago, every inequality metric has shown the level stabilise. America has a problem, for sure, he said, but “it’s a very different one from the one in Britain.” Nelson citied the Brexit referendum vote as evidence that the economically disenfranchised can still have a political effect. “Those were the kind of people who never voted because they felt it would never change anything. Now that has changed.”

But while financial inequality is always emphasised, continued Nelson, other kinds of inequality are just as important. Inequality of educational provision for example. In the state system, rich kids are three times more likely to get good results than poor children. “Is that because we think the poor kids are thicker than the rich kids?” asked Nelson. Of course not. There’s also the problem of health inequality (discussed in detail in the previous British Academy debate). But these issues, said Nelson, are not in vogue. Only bashing the rich is in vogue. There is a debate waiting to be prised open, if only we ask the right questions.

Anne Phillips, Professor of Political Science at London School of Economics, countered Nelson by saying that income inequality does indeed erode democracy. The wealthy live “increasingly cordoned lives,” and are able to “buy themselves out of shared experiences and shared provision.” This makes it easier, said Philips, to look at those at the poorer end of the spectrum and not “think them your equals.” Historically, we began with the idea of civil and political equality—the American Declaration of Independence or the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. But admirable as these proclamations were, they did not cover women or racial minorities. And it did not take account of income and wealth inequality. “The heart of the argument is that we should all be of equal worth.” For that there have to be limits to inequality and greater public provision of services—buses, libraries, public amenities. When public provision decreases, our empathy also retreats.

We need to keep reminding ourselves, said Phillips, that equality is behind the idea of democracy. It isn’t just a system of voting rights or the rule of law and a free press. On the Brexit vote, she said she was shocked that four million people signed a petition to repudiate the vote to leave the EU. “We live in a society that pays lip service to democracy,” but that isn’t how we truly live our lives.

Zoe Williams, a columnist for the Guardian newspaper, took issue with the idea that only the disenfranchised voted for Brexit. “There’s too much focus on how the poor voted in the referendum,” said Williams. Well-heeled people in the south also voted overwhelmingly for Brexit. “I do reject the result not because I don't meet enough poor people, but because I feel like I’m going to meet many more after it.” Williams said that on the issue of inequality, the huge range of problems it causes is pretty well established. But statistics can be misleading. Trying to accord it the status of an equation makes it seem very remote in the way physics is remote, and makes it seem inevitable in the way that physics is inevitable.

A better way of talking about it, said Williams, is to examine how inequality makes your life worse. “As profits go more towards capital and less towards labour, then working conditions have become more precarious because people haven’t got enough bargaining power. Unions have declined, hyper-surveillance has become the norm, working conditions declined further. An imbalance of power intensifies the vicious circle.” At the Labour Party meetings that Williams attends, she says they always ask these questions: Why isn’t there anybody on a zero-hours contact here? Why isn't there anybody disabled here? Why are we all white and middle-class? The answer, she said, was that if you’re on a zero-hours contract you probably work long hours. “The problem with socialism is that it takes a lot of evenings.”

In the audience Q&A, Ruth Lister, a Labour peer and fellow of the British academy turned on Fraser Nelson. “When Fraser talked about rich bashing, well, what I have seen is poor bashing over the last generation or more. It's only really since the crisis that we’ve started to get a bit of critique of the people at the top.” She added that it is necessary to factor in the big increase in inequality during the Thatcher years—which was the real break with the post-war trend of growing equality.

For further details of British Academy debates visit the website