Why oh why didn’t we see it coming?

I shouldn’t bother, but it annoys me. There is a throw-away line in the excellent review by John Lloyd (pictured) of the current state of progressive politics:

At gloomy meetings of UK and US progressives in Oxford and London earlier this month, the former Blair adviser Roger Liddle admitted that British Labourites hadn’t anticipated the huge growth of inequality and the rising popular anger that now attends it.

There is a good reason why they failed to anticipate it, which is that it did not happen. As I wrote recently (and, although you should never go below the line, the comments are a tribute to the evidence-based open-mindedness of my readers), the degree of income inequality hardly changed in the New Labour years, while the valedictory act of the Brown government was a marked increase in equality in the fiscal year 2010/11.

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• porkfright

  Let them eat cake whilst convincing youself that income inequality and popular anger simply aren’t happening. Great.

• greggf

  “There is a good reason why they failed to anticipate it, which is that it did not happen.”

  True, but what has happened is that UK income growth in general almost reversed by the end of New Labour’s rule. The EU’s Eurostats show that UK earnings in terms of the Euro have risen only by 1% since 2000, and following the fall of sterling in 2007/08 earnings must have declined afterwards in relative terms.
  Such earnings reversals may trigger “rising popular anger”, which would be directed somewhere and with the bankers’ bonuses, various related scams etc., the “degree of income inequality” seems a suitable association and excuse.

• http://twitter.com/francessmith frances smith

  i just checked your previous article, and what it seems to be saying is that according to the ifs higher incomes fell in the first two years of the coalition, it is inevitable that following a financial crash some people on high incomes might have their incomes reduced.

  but i am not sure why this proves that income inequality didn’t increase under labour. and the problem is, in any case, there are issues relating to the cost of living, including the housing boom, that mean that stagnant real incomes for people on average or below incomes have left people feeling worse off. and the growth in personal debt is sufficient evidence for that, everyone can’t just be profligate spenders.

  i won’t use the lies, damned lies and statistics quote as its too obvious, but we can all find statistics that prove what we want to believe.

  but real life experience is what matters for most people.

• Pacificweather

  It’s good to be proud of your achievements. Labour failed to make any change to income distribution in 13 years of goverment. I can hear James Keir Hardie cheering from his grave.