Ever since the Elizabethan poor laws — if not before — society has tended to
divide the poor into the deserving and the undeserving. But, as I write in this week’s magazine, our politicians are now taking aim at a new category, the undeserving rich.
Who you consider to be the undeserving rich depends on your ideological leanings. Russian oligarchs or the families of Middle Eastern despots are, perhaps, the most obvious examples. They have acquired huge wealth but often by illegitimate means. Then come those who evade, to use a favourite phrase of both David Cameron and Ed Miliband, “their responsibilities”. This includes those who dodge their taxes or — more controversially — the bankers who went back to paying themselves mega-bonuses only years after being saved from going bust by the taxpayer.
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