Labour and the the Tories will never address income inequality – because they fight to appeal to Tory swing-voters for their turn at power in Westminster.

Look at how Labour performs in addressing Income Inequality as compared with the Tories when in office. Then compare how it performs against other European countries.

It’s clear that Labour does no better than right-wing government: the top 10% rapidly grow their share of national income, whilst the bottom 50% see their share rapidly reducing. The rich get richer: the poor get poorer. Yet, as is evident from other countries with socialist governments, this doesn’t have to be so.

The problem is the Westminster First Past The Power system (FPTP). This means a relatively small number of Tory swing voters, mostly in England, end up being very important in deciding which party – Labour or Tory – gets their turn in power. With a majority of seats they get to win – even if this is nowhere near a majority of votes (as often happens).

So, for progressive policies to be comprehensively adopted, the UK needs to ditch FPTP and adopt the system that everyone else uses – Proportional Representation (PR). This makes every vote count, and stops small cliques from controlling the outcome.

Scotland already uses PR in its Parliamentary elections and this will continue after it regains independence. In this way future Scottish Governments can deliver the progressive policies, to build the fairer society that we want.

Sources

https://wid.world/