Wealth inequality is depressingly in the news day in and day out at the moment. It’s almost as if the papers do not have enough photos of the Prime Minister channelling Winston Churchill to publish. Mercifully it is not often called wealth inequality, nor does it appear the great strides undertaken in recent decades to undermine the damaging concept of accident of birth look to be at risk of reversal. Still, sensationalism sells and so we must endure the humdrum and mundane spectacle of starving pensioners when we should be revelling in our status as a military superpower.
Do you ever see the Russian, North Korea or Nambian free press droning on about the skinny children of poor families? No! Firstly because in Great Britain we sensibly choose not to see lower quality, foreign press and keep our vision of ourselves undiluted. Secondly because the press of those nations know that what the people want to see are great big missiles on the front pages, not the shuttered fronts of libraries and vacant GP surgeries.
Happily for the UK the pandemic rode in so swift on the heels of Brexit that all attention turned that way and your average patriotic voter was spared the experience of Brussels red tape at immigration control in France or Spain. Now the war in Ukraine has turned up just as the pandemic omnibus disappears over the horizon. You would think such global events would be sufficient to keep the Great British public safe from introspection. But it appears not so.
Now our dominant, world leading executive must appeal to the collective mindset. Mr Johnson must daily remind everyone that we are one of the richest countries on earth. It matters not how that wealth has been attained, either through inheritance or (in the case of many PPE deals) by fraud. If the people are aware that the people are collectively wealthy they will live in hope that one day they too may inherit a fortune.
Dickens is in our bloodstream still and we must channel him for the greater good. The only missing piece of the puzzle is transportation. Just imagine the excitement if Priti Patel was able to ship undesirables off to some far flung land? Poor children could once again wonder if one day one of them may return with wealth in their hands.
