Life was far from perfect in the 70s, Brian Reade says, but Kemi Badenoch seems to have forgotten that in many respects, Brits were far better off than they are today
The Tories are re-telling their favourite fairytale about the time a nasty wolf in left-wing clothing ate the heart out of Britain.
At PMQs, Kemi Badenoch praised Norman Tebbit for rescuing this country from the Labour-run “chaos of the 1970s” before arguing that Keir Starmer wants to return us to that chaotic decade by flirting with a wealth tax.
Well, seeing as you weren’t alive in those bell-bottom days Kemi, let me give you some facts. Life was far from perfect in the 70s. Racism, sexism and homophobia were given free passes, the global oil crisis and shrinking post-Empire markets caused a run on the Pound, police corruption was off the scale and thanks to weak management, chronic underinvestment and powerful trade unions, industrial relations resembled a warzone.
But it was, in many respects, a glorious time to be alive. There was a strong sense of community, belief in public services, free higher education, council houses aplenty, workers grafted for fewer hours in more secure jobs, The Clash and Sex Pistols ushered a new era of music, watching football was as cheap as chips and Thatcher had yet to turn Britain into a selfish, divided bearpit where only the strong survived.
Plus, 1976 was officially the year when incomes in this country were at their most equal. Indeed, the only European country where the gap between rich and poor was narrower was Sweden.
But Thatcher came to power at the end of the 70s and decreed this equality nonsense had gone too far. So she let the free markets rip and slashed higher rates of tax, helping the rich gorge on the nation’s wealth and leaving the poor, the weak and the old industrial heartlands to rot.
The gap between the top and the bottom in the UK has only carried on widening, which is why today we are the second most unequal G7 economy after America and the second most unequal nation in Europe after Bulgaria.
The richest 70,000 people now take home 67 times more than the average worker, with CEOs like Tesco’s Ken Murphy picking up £10 million last year, 431 times more than his company’s mean wage.
Recent research from The Equality Trust showed the UK’s richest 50 families have more wealth than half the population and the billionaire count has soared from 15 in 1990 to 165 last year.
We live in times of peak inequality making us an impoverished, unhealthy country where public services have stagnated, the economy has flatlined and a third of children live below the poverty line.
Which is why the likes of Neil Kinnock is calling on Starmer to bring in a wealth tax on assets worth more than £10million and why this generation of Tories hate the idea almost as much as they hate the 1970s. Because equality is anathema to them.
Whether it’s Kinnock’s tax on assets, a mansion tax, increasing capital gains tax, a new tax band for the super-wealthy or slashing relief on pensions for the richest, the government has to act.
It’s no longer a question of whether Labour’s reputation can afford a wealth tax, it’s whether, in the face of staggering debt and limited options, it can afford not to address the terminal dysfunction caused by a vampiric economy in which most of the wealth gets sucked up by the few at the top.
It’s about our country Stayin’ Alive, as we used to sing in bell-bottom days.