Tag Archives: fairness

Reform is on the rise. Led by the garrulous Farage, it is hoovering up votes across the country by doing one simple thing: articulating the grievances of the working classes. 

While it is generally recognised that populism rarely leads to stable government, there is a growing realisation that Reform has a point. It’s not easy, but if we look beyond their abhorrent views on race, religion and equality, they are articulating an economic critique. 

Okay, characterising it as a ‘critique’ is a bit of a stretch – it lacks intellectual rigour or depth – but Farage’s economic cri de coeur resonates with the working classes because it speaks to their lived experience. 

Reform can make the running on this because they are the only ones singing the song. 

Although GDP in Western countries has grown hugely since the 1990s, median wages have remained largely static. That’s the kind of dry economic statistic that is almost guaranteed to put half your audience to sleep while inciting the other half to argue vehemently over its causes. However, the reality of what that means is clear to see. The rich have got richer – much richer – while the poor squeak by. 

We shouldn’t be surprised to see that this leads to political unrest, but some people try to dismiss this as the politics of envy. After all, the reasoning goes, many people may be poor in relative terms, but in absolute terms, they are much richer than previous generations. So what are they complaining about? 

We also live in an unprecedented era of social mobility, in which numerous people have ascended the economic ladder, with some of them becoming fabulously wealthy. It’s self-evident, is it not, that people who don’t get ahead only have themselves to blame. 

Where the politics of envy narrative fails is in ignoring a fundamental facet of human nature, the sense of fairness. Fairness is intrinsic to human psychology – it even appears to be inherent to the psychology of other social animals such as wolves and other animals. We ignore this primal instinct at our peril. 

Is it fair that some people can afford to own several nice homes when many others cannot afford to own even one basic one? If the purpose of an economy is to allocate resources to the members of society, is it fair that some people spend lavishly on luxuries while many others watch every penny? Can we say that we live in a fair society when the poorest among us struggle to put food on the table for their families, or – that awful phrase – have to choose between eating and heating?