Arguably the most telling characteristic of any society is the degree of inequality.   In Britain’s case it has not only grown in the last two decades to previously unheard-of dimensions, it has even spawned a new social class system and deconstructed the whole concept of aspiration and social mobility.   It has made the facile division of Britain into working class/middle class or Middle England versus the rest wholly otiose.   That does not begin to reflect the ugly social reality of UK 2010.

The distinctive features of the social landscape are no longer the gradual assimilation of an upwardly mobile working class into a broad-tent middle class, but rather the distinctive polarisation at either end of the spectrum into extremes of alienation.   Richard Lambert, president of the CBI no less, has recently referred to the gargantuan greed and bonuses of the hyper-wealthy, perhaps 1-2% of the population, as marking them out as aliens.  

At the other end, little recognised and discarded on the scrap heap by all the political parties, is a large growing bitter rejectionist surly under-class numbering as much as 15% of the British nation today. The don’t participate, they don’t compete, they don’t vote, they don’t care.   They are possessed of low self-esteem, disdain of others, a demi-monde of delinquent survival, a sub-culture of hopelessness.

The figures are shameful.   Those living in extreme poverty – below 40% of the median income – are now 0.7 million more than a decade and a half ago, and the average real incomes of the poorest tenth have actually fallen by 2% in the decade before 2008, even before the recession will have pushed the total to a million or more.   The super-rich at the same time have hit a bonanza beyond the dreams of Croesus.   In the last year alone the wealth of the richest 1,000 individuals has soared by a staggering £77 billions, by no less than 30%, to a total of £335 billions today.

To talk now of being a one-nation Tory (as Cameron has done) or even a one-nation New Labourite is just for the birds.   Britain is now a more unequal society even than under Mrs. Thatcher.   If equality is the lodestone of a civilised society, we are now further away from the foundations of decency and civilisation than for a hundred years.   Yet it speaks volumes about the election campaign now ending that poverty, inequality and stratospheric wealth have been scarcely even mentioned.    If the new Parliament is to inaugurate renewal, a mass movement like the Levellers, the Chartists and the suffragettes will be needed afresh to reverse the current obscenities of greed and power.

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