others from smaller parties like the Green Party and the UK Independence Party .... People who come up with brilliant in
Inequality and the UK general election March 2015
1. Introduction The story On May 7th Britain is holding a general election to choose its next government. One of the biggest issues in the campaign is the gap between people with a lot of money and everyone else. Facts about this news story • This is the first general election since 2010. • At the moment two political parties run Britain together: the Conservatives and the
Liberal Democrats. They want to stay in power. The Labour Party, which was the party until 2010, wants to replace them. So all the parties are working hard to persuade ordinary people to vote for them. • The result of the election will affect all of us. Each party has a different idea of how it
would run Britain: how hospitals are managed, what is taught in schools, whether British soldiers go to war or not, how much we will be taxed. (You don’t have to be an adult to pay tax: for example, if you buy a bag of crisps for £1, 20p of that goes straight to the government). • One of the big issues in this election is inequality, or the gap between what different
people in Britain earn. By some measures, that gap is growing. And the main political parties have different ideas about whether it is a problem and what should be done about it.
Background context • Britain is divided into 650 areas, or “constituencies” as they are known. Each is roughly
the same size (on average about 70,000 people, which is a little under the number of people who can fit in Wembley Stadium) and elects one person to represent it in Parliament in Westminster. • The job of that member of parliament (or MP) is to stand up for the area and vote for or
against government plans on behalf of it. • Elections usually take place every five years. They give the people living in each
constituency the chance to give their MP another term in office (if they like him or her), or to fire their MP (if they do not like how he or she is representing the area). • Every British person aged 18 or over (apart from prisoners) gets one vote in his or her
constituency. He or she can use it to support any one of the candidates who want to be MP. In most places there is one candidate for each of the main parties. • Where you live there will almost certainly be a candidate from the Conservative Party,
one from the Labour Party, one from the Liberal Democrat party, and probably several others from smaller parties like the Green Party and the UK Independence Party. • Each party uses a particular colour to identify itself. The Conservatives are blue, the
Liberal Democrats are yellow and Labour is red. And the Green Party is (you guessed it!) green. • This year’s election is really exciting for two reasons. First, it is very hard to guess who
will win. Sometimes it is clear which party will get the most votes. This time it looks like the two biggest parties - Labour and the Conservatives - have similar amounts of support. So the result could be really close. • Second, big things have happened since the last election. The Conservatives and the
Liberal Democrats were worried that the government was spending more than it could afford, so have made cuts to some public services (like payments to people without a job). Some people think this was a good move, but others are angry. The election will give everyone a chance to vote on whether the cuts were right or not. • The Labour Party says these cuts have been unfair. It claims that the government has let
the rich pay less tax and cut public services used by ordinary people. It says that the government has done too little about inequality. • “Inequality” is any sort of gap between one person, group or area and another. In British
politics it usually refers to the gap between people who earn a lot of money and people who earn less. • The different political parties have different views on inequality. The Conservative Party
tends to think that it matters relatively little, as long as everyone is getting richer. It has cut the tax that the richest people pay, but also points out that the country as a whole is getting richer. Its MPs are more likely to say that successful people should earn much more than others, because that encourages everyone to work harder and be successful.
• The Labour Party tends to be more concerned by the size of the gap. It tends to be more
in favour of the government taxing the rich to give some of their wealth to the rest. It says that if it wins the election, it will do more to reduce inequality than the current government. For example, it plans to increase tax on people who live in very expensive houses. • The Liberal Democrat party is somewhere between the two; some of its MPs think more
like the Labour ones, others more like the Conservative ones. What does the debate about inequality look like? For an idea of what the debate on inequality looks like, watch the first two-and-a-half minutes of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv5t6rC6yvg It shows a debate between MPs in Parliament. First Simon Hughes (the Liberal Democrat MP for Southwark, part of London) criticises Margaret Thatcher (who was the Conservative prime minister when the video was filmed) for letting inequality grow. She replies that the gap between rich and poor is less important than whether everyone is getting better-off. She then repeats the point in answer to a second question (this time from a Labour MP). The clip is over 20 years old, but the same debates continue to rage today. This second video is a trailer for a film about inequality. It puts the opposite side of the argument from the one expressed by Margaret Thatcher: that inequality is basically a bad thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7gbNBWb8YE
2. Concepts The economy Democracy Inequality Capitalism Poverty
3. Starter Questions • How are the lifestyles of rich people, average people and poor people different? What
difference does money make? • Why do some people in Britain earn lots of money, others average amounts and some
very little? • Is the gap between the rich and the rest in Britain too big? • Is Labour right to tax rich people more? Or does that harsh on people who have made
lots of money by working hard and having good ideas? • Is it more important for society to be richer, or for the gap between rich and poor to be
smaller? • What could the government do to make Britain less unequal?
4. Standpoints • Britain is a fair country. People who work hard get rewarded with lots of money. People
who are lazy earn little. • A big gap between the rich and the rest makes everyone else jealous and unhappy. That
increases crime and other social problems. • Inequality is good because it makes people work harder. If everyone got the same
amount of money, no-one would bother working. • People who come up with brilliant inventions like the iPhone, or play football or sing
extremely well, should be able to earn many millions of pounds because they make us all happier. • If you grow up in poverty, it is much harder to succeed in life than if you grow up in a
family with plenty of money. • It is not the government’s responsibility to provide everyone with a comfortable life.
People should take responsibility for themselves. • Lots of people are rich simply because they got money from their parents. They have not
had to work hard for it. • You should vote for the politician who would make life better for your own family, even
if he or she would make life worse for other people in the country. • Politicians don’t understand inequality because most of them are rich.
5. Voices Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, authors of The Spirit Level, a book on inequality: “In more unequal societies people are five times as likely to be imprisoned, six times as likely to be clinically obese [unhealthily fat], and murder rates may be many times higher. The reason why these differences are so big is, quite simply, because the effects of inequality are not confined just to the least well-off: instead they affect the vast majority of the population.” http://pundit.co.nz/content/greed-is-definitely-not-good
Boris Johnson, the Conservative mayor of London: “I don’t believe that economic equality is possible; indeed, some measure of inequality is essential for the spirit of envy and keeping up with the Joneses and so on that it is a valuable spur to economic activity.” http://news.sky.com/story/1174637/boris-johnson-says-some-people-too-stupid Ed Miliband, leader of the Labour Party: “It's harder to climb the ladder when the rungs are further apart. Inequality means parents have vastly different resources – financial, personal and social – to help their children get on. I believe inequality shouldn’t be handed down, generation to generation, like the colour of our hair.” http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2012/05/21/ed-miliband-social-mobilityspeech-in-full Margaret Thatcher, former prime minister: “too many people [think] that if they have a problem, it’s the government’s job to cope with it. ‘I have a problem, I’ll get a grant.’ ‘I’m homeless, the government must house me.’ They’re casting their problem on society. And you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.” http://www.thecommentator.com/article/3276/no_such_thing_as_society\
6. Further facts – with sources The average wage in Britain is £26,500 per year. The average boss at the country’s biggest companies earns that much in just two-and-a-half-days. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/uk-average-salary-26500-figures-3002995 MPs earn over twice the average amount: £67,060 per year. http://www.parliament.uk/about/mps-and-lords/members/pay-mps/ The top 1% of earners in Britain pay 28% of all income tax. https://fullfact.org/factchecks/tax-28258 Political parties rely on donations from members of the public to pay for things like posters, leaflets to deliver to voters, and staff. Some rich people give the political parties huge amounts of money. One man once gave the Conservative £5 million in one go. It would take an average person in Britain 188 years to earn that much money. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/08/party-funding-scandal-davidcameron-conservatives Sir Richard Branson dropped out of school and started life as a businessman selling music. He used the money he earned to set up more and more businesses. He now has his own airline, railway operator, bank and hotel chain—and is working on a company that will offer people rides to space. Today he is worth over £3 billion, or three thousand, thousand, thousand pounds. About 50,000 people work at his companies. http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/smallbusiness/article-2809685/Top-25-selfentrepreneurs-started-small-sums-money.html http://www.forbes.com/profile/richard-branson/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Group
7. Common assumptions made about this subject
• There will always be some inequality. It is too difficult for governments to get rid of it.
And people are different, so it is natural. • But if the gap between the rich and the poor is extremely big, society will be divided and
probably unfair. • People who work hard and have good ideas should earn more money than people who
do not. • Democracy should limit inequality as it gives every person the same power to influence
the government. • The government has a responsibility to limit inequality by taxing people who are doing
well and using some of the money to help those who are struggling.
