Liam Byrne

something like the middle class task force.

Yeah, when I was chief secretary.

And he said, well, look, you're not setting up a middle class task force, but you can go and have a treasury team to go and have a look at this.

We went off for six months, came back, and sure enough, we'd found that living standards had basically begun plateauing in Britain in about 2004, 2005.

And so for about four or five years in the run-up to the 2010 election, ordinary working people in Britain had not really had a pay rise.

And we had missed it, if we're honest.

Why did we miss it?

Well, no one had put this analysis together before.

It was the first time.

I mean, it took us a long time to kind of put it together.

But I think we were just too optimistic about the unalloyed good of trade and technology lifting all boats.

And the truth is, by 2004, that had stopped happening.

And that's why you've got this inequality of wealth in particular that has grown since 2010.

So since 2010, the top 1% in our country have multiplied their wealth

31 times more than everybody else.

So if you're an ordinary working person, and most reform voters are median income, median wealth, you now look out on a country where there's this inequality of progress.

These people at the top, it's haves, have-nots, and have-yots now.

Whereas I'm busting a gut every day, and I'm just not moving on.

And the kids, they feel they're not, the kids now feel they're won't-haves.

They'll never have a piece of the pie.