Before the credit crunch it used often to be said that the Right had won the economic argument and the Left had won the cultural one. But the Left had also appeared to win a third argument, the linguistic one. I refer to the use of the term “inequality” to signify differences in income and wealth. The implication is that equality should be the norm, deviations from which need to be explained.
The issue has become topical again. A number of rich businessmen, including the fund manager Warren Buffett, seem to feel guilty about their earnings and have called for higher taxes on people like themselves. Official statisticians turn out endless studies of movements in inequality. The last Labour government left behind a monster Equalities Act, which on some interpretations may be mainly concerned with race and sex discrimination, but on other interpretations is much more intrusive. If I tell my social democrat friends that material equality is only to be found in the grave and not even there – Mozart was buried in a pauper’s cemetery – the look of distaste that comes into their faces is painful to behold.
There has been a half-hearted riposte from the other side, concentrating on the UK’s top 50 per cent marginal tax rate, which is said to be a futile but harmful exercise in gesture politics – which it is, but not necessarily the best place at which to begin a counterattack.