Under the fiscal austerity of the Tory government, a highly controversial benefits cap has been established — at an income level that would secure a beneficiary his or her place amongst the top 1% wealthiest people in the world.
And most of the remaining 99% of the global population have to pay for their treatment of serious illness and long-term care out of that lesser income, or die painfully at home.
When voters wonder at the self-interest of the top 1% of UK earners, they might do so by reflecting on their own financial choices — and how they might be judged by the 99% of the global population that will regard them with similar moral despair.
While the UK population carries on its pillow fight in the business class cabin of humanity, those of us genuinely wanting a system that serves the greater good must engage the various constituencies that we share our highly privileged society with. That means selling a progressive agenda to the growing population that now enjoys unprecedented property wealth.
These are not people that fit the widely maligned conservative caricature, but rather comprise a generation that has worked hard to adapt to an unfair system — and who may fear their hard-won gains will be diminished by a political shift.
Preserving and advancing a progressive agenda can be achieved only with information, negotiation, and compromise. Nothing will be won by demonising the increasingly established middle class; by trading in soundbites, headlines, and incomplete or decontextualised factoids; or by a slavish commitment to the increasingly anachronistic wings of political ideology. The traditional left must engage the middle classes in a more cerebral and nuanced debate regarding who gets what, and how it’s funded — and to unite all classes on internationalism over nationalism.
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