Chris Johns

But he should.

The other reasons, apart from housing, why the top 10% are pulled away from the bottom 90% in the UK, have got to do, again, with housing, but via inheritance.

It's now more important than ever to inherit in this country because of this housing problem.

And another reason why houses enter into this equation is something called right-to-buy.

We sold off the social housing stock to people that typically benefited the older cohort of people in this country.

And we destroyed the social housing stock, or at least that contributed a large part to the destruction of the social housing stock.

And it didn't help that, of course, we don't build any social housing anymore.

anymore.

The other factor is the one dear to my heart, at least, and you know a lot about this, Jim, and that's the financialization of the economy.

If you do want to be a millionaire, if you want to be in that top 10%, you basically go into finance.

Certainly that was the story in the 80s and 90s and for a long time.

There are other businesses now, tech, AI, that will get you there as well.

But the fetishization of the City of London and financial services

And if you're a maths graduate that wants to become wealthy, then you go into the city and you produce absolutely nothing of societal value.

But you do become very rich.

So there are lots of things, none of which are being touched on by our probable, likely, possible next prime minister, Andy Burnham.

So in this sense, I think Tony Blair is absolutely right.

This change of prime minister is going to make us look even more like Italy in the 1950s and make us even more like a badly governed 1950s European economy.

I suspect an awful lot of people on all sides of the House of Commons or wannabe politicians know what the right thing to do is.

Yeah, but they won't do it.