This thinktank exposed fat cats and obscenely high pay. Guess what has happened to it?

‘This year the High Pay Centre calculated that it took the median FTSE 100 CEO less than two and a half days in January to be paid what a median full-time employee earns in a year.’ Canary Wharf, London. Photograph: Victoria Jones/PA

Shock ricocheted around the world of social research this week with the sudden news of the imminent closure of the High Pay Centre (HPC). Founded in 2011 by the former Guardian business editor Deborah Hargreaves to focus on analysis of extreme pay at the top and the widening pay gap between CEOs and their average employees, its closure feels like the death of an idea.

Others campaign on tax and redistribution but the HPC was concerned with “predistribution”. It was unique in looking at the origins of inequality in pay and control over pay rates. Its annual report is always covered, even by rightwing media, because each year it reawakens a sense of disbelief at the way we live now. Why would the median FTSE 100 CEO need £4.4m this year to do his (yes, mostly still his) gratifyingly high-status job? Why?