Britain’s Great Divide

Beyond that, Conservatives and Labour point the finger at one another. Tories lay the blame on the 1960s Labour policy of closing most of the nation's selective grammar schools, which provided a solid free education to the brightest working-class kids. Labour argues the goal of that program was greater fairness, claiming at the time that it was inequitable to consign the less able kids to the second best schools. Today, Labour ministers contend that any responsibility for entrenched divisions belongs at least in part to the Conservatives and the wealth-at-any-price policies pursued in the 1980s government of Margaret Thatcher. Brown himself has talked of the "lost generation" of "Thatcher's children," damaged by the experience of their parents' unemployment. The government also points to a slew of recent Labour initiatives aimed at bolstering the wealth and opportunities of the poorest. Thanks to a mix of benefit reforms and tax credits some 600,000 children have been lifted out of poverty in the Blair-Brown years, according to the government. Labour has also lavished money on schooling and a program that guarantees a free, part-time education to 3- and 4-year-olds.

But at the same time, the wealthy have gotten far wealthier, increasing the gap between the rich and poor. Since it took over in 1997, Labour has left tax rates broadly the same as under the Conservatives for fear of alienating middle-class voters. As a result, the top 10 percent of the population now enjoy the same share of the nation's total income as in the 1940s, with the superrich faring best, according to the IFS. The collective wealth of the country's 1,000 richest people jumped 15 percent last year. In the words of Peter Mandelson, the former Blair aide who is now the European Union's trade commissioner: "We are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich."

The public may be less at ease with it. One recent poll of social attitudes suggests three quarters of the population now believe that income differences are too great, while 70 percent believe a parent's wealth plays too large a role in determining a child's chances in life. "Last year £14 billion was paid out in City bonuses," says Martin Narey, who heads the Social Mobility Commission for the Liberal Democrats. "There is an instinctive loathing for that sort of inequity."

But finding solutions may be tricky. The Conservatives are ideologically leery of top-down solutions imposed by central government. Its party literature talks of a stronger role for volunteer groups and local communities. Party thinkers believe that whenever possible, it's best to act at grass-roots levels, encouraging local role models to coax the young into taking up opportunities for self-improvement. Moreover, they see no merit in attempting to level out incomes with a more progressive tax code. "It is misguided to think of this as an equality issue; it's an equality of opportunity issue," says M.P. David Davis, who heads the Conservative Party's Social Mobility Task Force. "The simple truth is that whatever you try to do at the top end of society is of very little use at the bottom."

Now with both parties making social mobility a central component of their platforms, they appear to be edging ever closer to one another. The Tories are fretting publicly about such old concerns of the left as a divided society, while Labour is espousing some familiar ideas from the right on how to pull or prod the poor out of poverty. Last week the government unveiled a package of measures billed as the greatest revolution since the creation of the welfare state in the 1940s. On the list: forcing the unemployed to work in return for benefits after two years, and requiring the unskilled to take up training. Tony Blair once talked a similar talk, but didn't follow up. Brown's message is that the many can't hope to join the few without individual effort. It is a Labour principle that any Conservative might share.

© 2008