Who is government for? It’s a question we should never stop asking. The answer that keeps coming back is “not the majority”. For example, the first phase of the Covid-19 pandemic produced remarkably consistent polling results. Repeated surveys showed fewer than 10% of people wished to return to the pre-pandemic economy. The great majority wanted to see one good thing emerging from the trauma of the illness and the measures used to address it: a fairer, greener, kinder economic system.
But the Conservative government had other ideas. It announced what then prime minister Boris Johnson called a “significant return to normality”. His normality, of course. The structure of the Covid bailouts ensured that the big banks gained massively, often at the expense of small businesses. Executive pay and dividends for shareholders soared, while lowlier workers lost incomes and livelihoods.
