Hatred of the rich is back in fashion

9 June 2007

Ross Clark says that the anti-globalisation rioters protesting at the G8 summit in Germany and Labour’s deputy leadership contenders are part of a new and dangerous trend towards wealth-bashing

It is certainly a contrast from the remark made by Ms Harman’s soon to be ex-boss, Tony Blair, when challenged on equality, also in a Newsnight interview, in 2001: ‘It’s not a burning ambition for me to make sure that David Beckham earns less money.’ But it is a sign of the direction in which Labour is going: away from championing opportunity for the many and not the few — and towards straightforward envy of those who have wealth. It wasn’t just Harriet Harman: Peter Hain too was tempted to take a pop at City bonuses — what he intended to do about them he didn’t quite say, but if he thinks they should be taxed punitively, he perhaps ought to make clear the effect on the British economy were its single largest export industry — financial services — to be driven abroad.

It is a long way, of course, from playing to the left-wing gallery in a debate over the deputy leadership of the Labour party to throwing bricks through windows at the G8 summit. But before respected government and former government ministers start showing contempt towards a particular group of people — in this case the wealthy — they might just care to consider whom they are influencing. A month ago Ségolène Royal, the socialist candidate in the French presidential election, made one of the most disreputable remarks uttered in recent times by a leading mainstream Western politician when she implored the French to vote for her or, in the event of a Sarkozy victory, face the prospect of seeing their country explode into anger and rioting. Fortunately, in the event her implied threat not only backfired on her: her prediction failed to materialise.

One imagines that she was not really egging on her countrymen to indulge in the orgy of car-burning which struck urban France in 2005 following the electrocution of two immigrants in a Parisian suburb. She may even have been horrified at re-hearing her remarks. But there is little doubt: there are elements of the Left that are getting nastier. Having regrouped after the distraction posed by al-Qa’eda, the rich-haters are back on the march.

Ross Clark is the author of The Great Before, a satire on the anti-globalisation movement, published by www.greatbefore.com.