Ten years ago, in the epilogue of my book Bread: The Story of Greggs, I stressed the need for the astonishing increase in top earnings in Britain to be curbed. At that time this was considered a serious problem. Yet despite the best efforts of many influential public voices, this position never translated into policy.
Sadly, since then, the growing divide has become even more extreme.. The richest 10% of households now hold 43% of all the country’s wealth, according to the Office for National Statistics. The bottom 50% hold only 9%. We now have 177 billionaires in this country, up from just 29 in 2010, with a combined wealth of £653bn. The difference between very wealthy and less well-off people has become obscene.
