Unsubscribe
View in your browser

Hi ,

Equality campaigners everywhere are preparing for a budget at the end of November that looks likely to be a defining moment for the next few years: Chancellor Rachel Reeves is advertising that she is very likely to break Labour's manifesto pledge not to raise income tax, national insurance or VAT.
 
Meanwhile, a dozen different options for "taxing the rich" have been mysteriously leaked to the press. Why, it's almost as if someone was testing the waters to see what the reaction to different ideas was.  We've seen proposals for different kinds of council tax reform, exit taxes, property taxes, inheritance tax changes, and even attempts to claim there'll be some kind of tax on wealth. Some of these are good ideas, some aren't, but either way it seems that big parts of the budget are still in flux with less than a month to go. We have everything to play for and we at the Equality Trust will be fighting lobbyists for the super rich the whole way.
 
But before we spend the next month analysing the policy options, impacts, ramifications and ripples of the hundreds of choices made in the budget, it's worth taking a step back and asking: how did the UK get here? What kind of society have we built, and what kind of society should we be trying to build instead?
 
So with that in mind, we asked our hard-working trustees to write about how they felt about the UK's situation and the Equality Trust's mission to build a more equal society.
 
Writing together for Trustees Week, our co-chairs Yamini Cinamon Nair and Tom Allanson joined Professors Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson to ask a question that I know frustrates all of us: why do our politicians keep ignoring inequality? We're one of the most unequal big economies. We have reams of evidence of how inequality hurts people, weakens society, and cooks the planet. What more do we need?
 
"We believe in a new politics of hope – a vision that shows another future is possible. This scale of inequality is not inevitable. Together, we can build a more cohesive, more equal society."
 
Read their blog

Meanwhile, our trustee Dianne Danquah wrote about how she discovered the UK's systemic inequality and why she's thrown herself into the Equality Trust's mission, first as a youth advocate and then as a trustee.

"I became a trustee at the Equality Trust earlier this year because I believe everyone deserves to live a beautiful life."
 
Read Dianne's blog

The sheer scale of the inequality crisis can feel insurmountable. How do you surmount so many moving parts moving against you? But our trustees are right: the way we surmount it is by building a politics of hope, another future, and a beautiful life for everyone.  

If that's what motivates you too, we're asking you to chip in to help us make that vision become a reality. 
 
Support the Equality Trust
America inequality reaches heights previously thought impossible

Truly, nobody is doing it like the American government. With their government shutdown for over a month, critical programmes are losing the funding they need to operate. This now includes the Food Stamp programme SNAP, which more than 42 million Americans rely on to buy essential food. 

But while the equivalent of the entire population of Canada face going hungry, the American President is focused on building a palatial new ballroom in the White House. SNAP recipients have described themselves as "dumbfounded by the cruelty."

This evil-queen-in-a-fairytale style of governance is a compelling spectacle, but it's part of a larger story with ramifications for us all – nearly a million people in America have lost their job so far this year and large corporations are lining up to announce more cuts despite record profits and a soaring share of wealth accruing to billionaires. 

In both cases, oligarchs are becoming increasingly isolated from the reality the rest of us experience. This may bode ill.
Read more
 

We're aware that when clicking links in our newsletters, some users are being warned that the link is unsafe. This is due to a problem between Microsoft and our email provider, SendGrid. The links are safe to open.
 
Weekly Poll: How should we redistribute wealth? 
 

What policies would you support to redistribute wealth in the UK – and do you think it's likely that the budget will include them? Plus: what would you do with the £10.8bn lost to tax avoidance?

The results will be reported next week!
 
VOTE NOW

What would you like us to focus on in our budget campaign? You said:

  • "Growing wealth inequality, the over privileged elites and the permanent creation of a socio economic underclass."

  • "Children. Should have been top and centre of the government's priorities from the beginning. A rich nation that has so many children in poverty is morally unacceptable. Build on what's already been done. Abolish the two child benefit cap. Fully funded schools. Better paid teachers who will stay. Opportunities for all at the end of full time schooling. An education that will help them deal with the realities of our democratic society I.e. bring back Civics so they understand how hard the fight was to get a representative Parliamentary Democracy. Tutor them again on the fundamentals of the Scientific method, peer reviewed research. Objective truth. Reason. The perils of social media. Media Studies so they can recognise when and how they are being lied to and manipulated. Affordable and decent housing for all families. Decent air and water so they don't suffer from avoidable illnesses. An assault on disinformation so they are all inoculated against preventable illnesses. More and better paid social workers so violence, neglect and killing are drastically reduced."

  • "The return of all public services stolen from us back into Public Ownership without compensation."

  • "Not treating “the rich” as some kind of enemy, but a willing contributor. And less well-off people should also be contributing if they can. If we had fewer people relying on the state we would need to pay less tax. Make the connection between taxes and public services. You can’t have one without the other. I think we need a JFK approach and get people invested in their futures. Ask not what your country can do for you … etc"

  • "The water thing is awful, but child poverty is the priority for me. They need to change tack. We tried 14 years of austerity. Doesn't work. How about some Keynesianism?"
Inequality in Numbers

Share on Bluesky, Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads, Instagram, or Twitter
In The News
15 Nov: Make Them Pay global mobilisation

Fresh from our successful rally in September, Make Them Pay is organising events across the UK for a global day of action on Saturday 15th November. So far, events from Plymouth to Glasgow have been announced, including climate summits, a cardboard carnival, and several marches. The day is timed to add the maximum pressure to global leaders at the COP climate negotiations in Brazil, where a fall in global carbon emissions is possible for the first time. With no time to lose, Make Them Pay is demanding leaders tax the super rich and most polluting to invest in people and planet, rights and justice for people on the frontline of catastrophic climate change, and systemic change.  
Sign up
New: the gag order protecting tax avoiders

Incredible reporting from Tax Justice Network today reveals that an American-led lobbying effort turned a global tax transparency campaign into an effective gag order on national governments that prevented them from naming corporate tax avoiders. Safe from global scrutiny, the anonymous corporations caused countries to miss out on $475 billion of tax revenue from 2016 to 2021. This is far more than the $300 billion promised as a global climate finance fund in 2024, notes Greenpeace, while Tax Justice argue that the 2017 Trump tax reform allowed profit shifting to double. The biggest loser from this is the US itself, but the UK is estimated to have missed £10.8 billion from the gag order avoidance alone.
Read more 

The Equality Trust
Square Root Business Centre
Windmill Road
Croydon CR0 2XQ

+44 (0)20 3637 0324

info@equalitytrust.org.uk