Talk by Danny Dorling at the Royal Society of Arts, Thursday 19th July 2018, Durham Street Auditorium, RSA House

1. HAS THE UK REACHED
PEAK INEQUALITY?
Danny Dorling
Thursday 19 July 2018 1.00pm to 2:00pm
Royals Society for Arts, Manufactures and
Commerce, London
What will it take to begin to
descend from the peak of
inequality?
Figure 2.1 is from the last book:

2. '..undermine moral boundaries, inure people to the
acceptance of acts of extreme cruelty. Like hounds, people
have to be blooded. They have to be given the taste for
savagery. Fascism does this by building up the sense of
threat from a despised out-group.’
Fintan O’Toole, Irish Times, June 26 2018

4. … 12 countries in the middle (Netherlands 0.303)

5. Figure 4.3.1
Taken on July
13th 1914 at the
annual Harrow
verses Eton
Cricket match
(Lords). War
within 3 weeks.

7. Figure 4.3.2
Taken in July
1937 at the
annual Harrow
verses Eton
Cricket match
(Lords). War
within 3 years.

8. Martin Sorrel in 2010 at Davos, Photo by Sebastian Derungs, CC BY-SA 2.0
Peak
Inequality

9. 2: Politics
@FraserNelson 9 June
2017
“Jeremy Corbyn has just
increased Labour's share
of the vote more than any
other leader in any other
election sinceAttlee in
1945”

10. 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
1920
1930
1940
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
2020
1922 (Bonar Law)
1923 Conservative (Baldwin)
1924 Labour (MacDonald)
1929 Labour (MacDonald)
1931 Conservative/Liberal/
Nat. Labour/etc. (MacDonald)
1935 Conservative/Liberal
(Baldwin)
1945 Labour (Attlee)
1950 Labour (Attlee)
1951 Conservative (Churchill)
1955 Conservative (Eden)
1959 Conservative (Macmillan, followed by Douglas-
Home in 1963)
1964 Labour (Wilson)
1966 Labour (Wilson)
1970 Conservative (Heath)
1974 (February) Labour (Wilson) Minority
government
1974 (October) Labour (Wilson),
followed by LibLab Pact (Callaghan)
1979 Conservative (Thatcher)
1983 Conservative (Thatcher)
1987 Conservative (Thatcher)
1992 Conservative (Major)
1997 New Labour (Blair)
2001 New Labour (Blair)
2005 New Labour (Blair)
2010 Conservative/
Liberal (Cameron/Clegg)
2015 Conservative
(Cameron)
2017 Conservative/DUP (May/
Foster)
1924 Conservative (Baldwin)
‘National
Govern-
ment’
How geographically segregated Conservative
Political segregation 1910-2017 and the London local elections 2018
Minimum % of Tory voters to
move to spread them equally
This is what political
polarization looks like

11. 3. Housing
In August 2016, now almost 24
months ago, we were able to
measure the start of the slow and
steady housing market slump that
then began to gradually spread
across the country.
At the same time street
homelessness was rising, children
spending Christmas in B&Bs
reached a new high in 2017. Well
over a quarter of all families with
children in England now have to
live in private renting, five times
higher than a generation ago.

13. 4. Demography
Global human population change 1820-2015

14. 5: Education
Source: Dorling, D. (2017) The Equality Effect: Improving life for everyone, Oxford: New Internationalist

15. 1.39
1.35
1.33
1.29
1.32
1.26
1.23
1.18
1.19
1.13
1.10
1.08
1.12
1.02
1.18
1.05
1.13
1.19
1.00
1.05
1.10
1.15
1.20
1.25
1.30
1.35
1.40
1.45
1.50
2001
Q1
2002
Q1
2003
Q1
2004
Q1
2005
Q1
2006
Q1
2007
Q1
2008
Q1
2009
Q1
2010
Q1
2011
Q1
2012
Q1
2013
Q1
2014
Q1
2015
Q1
2016
Q1
2017
Q1
2018
Q1
6: Health Age-standardised
mortality rate, deaths
registered in Quarter
1 (Jan to Mar), 2001
to 2018; England
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/quarterlymortalityreports/januarytomarch2018

16. 7: Future
The cover photograph of this book was taken by Kristian Buss
on 14 November 2011 in London. It shows partygoers from the
fictional Swillindon club, who tried and failed to gain entry to
the Lord Mayor’s Banquet that evening. On being ejected by
the police, they joined the Occupy LSX protest at St Paul’s
Cathedral.
During his speech at that banquet, David Cameron, the then
Prime Minister, boasted that he now had ‘an opportunity to
begin to refashion the EU so it better serves this nation’s
interests …’.
Collectively, the EU was in a much better bargaining position
than he and his government were. Every country within the EU
was by then more economically equitable and mostly better
run by better politicians than those of the UK.

17. 25
30
35
40
45
50
55
60
65
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
Public Expenditure (%GDP)
International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Economic
Outlook Databasefor October, Washington, DC, IMF, 2010/2012/15
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2015/02/weodata/index.aspx
updated with 2018 data form the IMF
Finland
France
Denmark
Belgium
Austria
Sweden
Italy
Portugal
Norway
Germany
Netherlands
Greece
Spain
United Kingdom
The last graph!
The austerity to come

18. Conclusion
“When change truly happens it at first strikes seasoned commentators
as frankly impossible – a pipe-dream; then undesirable and full of
negative consequences; then ‘just about possible’ once the clamour
for change becomes overwhelming. Finally change happens and their
memories change with it.
They will say that they believed in the change as desirable all along;
they somehow saw it coming and so, too, were on the right side of
history. Then we can all forget that just a few years ago they had so
vehemently opposed the change, had justified the status quo, were so
very scornful, and ultimately wrong. That matters little. It is just
history.
What matters is ensuring that we are now at the peak and starting on
our way down. It’s a long way down.”
(first and partly written on 28th May 2016, updated in June 2018)
“Why Corbyn’s moral clarity could propel him to No. 10”
– The shift has started, it no longer relies on one person.