The Spectator’s Notes | 30 June 2007

Harriet Harman seems to have won the deputy leadership of the Labour party by saying she did not want people to spend £10,000 on a handbag when other people were ‘struggling’. Polly Toynbee tells us that this ‘resonated with public distaste’ at the ‘debauchery of riches at the top’. Did it? If so, why? A handbag that costs £10,000 involves a lot of work by a lot of people, all of whom need to earn a living and most of whom — those rearing the animal which produces the leather, those slaughtering the animal, those tanning the leather, etc.