Fifty families in Britain hold as much wealth as 34 million people.
This Autumn Conference, join us for A Just Society’s first fringe event, held jointly with Patriotic Millionaires UK. We’ll be asking what that concentration of wealth does to our politics, our media and our society, and where the line should be drawn.
It follows Sunday’s debate on Defending Democracy. That motion names billionaires who use money and media to influence British politics as a threat to our democracy, and proposes caps on donations and spending. Our fringe picks up where the motion stops. Capping donations closes one route from wealth to political power. Wealth on this scale has others: owning media companies and platforms, funding think tanks, paying for lobbying and litigation.
Liberals have always been wary of concentrated power in the state. The question on Monday evening is whether we should be as wary of it in private hands.
Bobby Dean, Liberal Democrat MP for Carshalton and Wallington, chairs. The panel is Julia Davies, a member of Patriotic Millionaires UK and co-founder of We Have The Power; Peter Geoghegan, investigative journalist, author of Democracy for Sale and former editor-in-chief of openDemocracy; and me, for A Just Society.
Monday 21 September, 19.45 to 21.00, Consort Room, Grand Hotel.
* Tanya Park is a Lib Dem County, Borough & Town councillor in Eastleigh, Hampshire and writes at A Just Society, a liberal policy project making the case for radical progressive policies grounded in liberal principles.
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