David Blunkett put his finger on it at a conference fringe meeting. He said that for young people in London and the south of England, inheriting a home from their parents was ‘like winning the lottery’. Meanwhile, families who rent their homes, or who live in cheaper areas – like his own Sheffield constituency – are doomed never to see their numbers come up.
It is a good analysis that makes the case for inheritance tax and counters the complaint from the Tories that the £250,000 threshold is far too low. Well, if inheriting a quarter-of-a-million pound home is like winning the lottery, surely it makes sense to pay tax on it? But at the same time, Blunkett showed up the paucity of Labour’s response. He was asked what the government was doing to counter such inequality. His reply? Er, baby bonds.
Baby bonds will give a £250 nest egg to every child born after 1 September 2002. My two-year-old son qualifies with just weeks to spare, so I’m not knocking them. But the £250, invested in an approved plan, is only likely to grow to around £600 by the time my son gets his hands on it at eighteen. Even with an unspecified top-up on his seventh birthday, the fund isn’t likely to go far above £1,000. Which won’t make much of a dent in his university fees, probably above £30,000 by 2020.
In truth, and due in part to the jump in house prices over recent years, inequality has grown since 1997. A recent Catalyst pamphlet produced research showing that that gap between rich and poor in Britain is now wider than at any time since the second world war.
Gordon Brown’s redistributive measures have not been enough to counter the trend for the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer. And if inequality is spreading at the same time that child poverty is falling, that means the people sliding behind are those in the lower half of the income table, but not right at the bottom – in other words, the working-class families Labour has always relied on for support, and who are now turning out to vote in ever-decreasing numbers.
The Tories are playing a curious game over London’s bid to host the 2012 Olympic games. They say they support the bid ‘in principle’. But does this sound like support to you? ‘So far we’ve focused too much on the joy of the Olympic games and far too little on the financial burden to Londoners’ – Angie Bray, Tory Olympic spokeswoman in the London Assembly. ‘The secretary of state might like to consider whether she should stop whingeing about the whingers and start winning the hearts and minds of the British public for a London bid’ – Julie Kirkbride MP, then Tory shadow culture minister.
The Tories’ support for the Olympic bid is about as fervent as their support for the Northern Ireland peace process or Michael Howard’s current support for the war in Iraq. But in Northern Ireland or Iraq, it doesn’t matter so much what the Opposition says. Whereas when the International Olympic Committee decides next year on where to stage the games, one factor it will consider is the degree of public support in each contending city. If the Tories carp loudly enough, a section of the public will be swayed against the bid and tell the pollsters so. The Tories could yet cost London the Olympics.
I went to see the Queen the other day, as a guest at a St James’s palace reception held by a charity of which Her Maj is patron. As soon as I arrived with my wife, we were issued with name badges bearing big blue stickers. Others had different coloured stickers. We soon worked out that it was a system to indicate the status of each guest. The VIPs had yellow stickers and were served their drinks in the Throne Room. Red stickers were in the middle, blue was bottom of the pile.
As a further twist, people with numbers on their stickers were lined up to exchange pleasantries with the Queen; those without saw only the Royal back.
As a numberless blue, I was the lowest of the low. I found myself chatting only to other numberless blues, just as the rest of the guests formed little cliques of their own peers. Obviously those at the pinnacle of the class system feel more comfortable working a room if there is a clear pecking order. That classless society could be a long time coming.