Hi ,
In six weeks, most of us will be heading to the polls. In Scotland and Wales you'll be voting for your devolved parliaments in elections with real scope to shape the direction of your nations. In England it's local elections: councillors, mayors, combined authorities.
It can feel like a strange disconnect to be choosing representatives while billionaires are blundering into wars that will damage living standards for millions, if not billions, of people across the globe. The democratic tools available to us can feel inadequate to the scale of what's happening.
But that tension is worth sitting with because understanding it might be the most important political act of the moment.
Billionaires are certainly feeling the pressure. Speaking to the New York Times, Peter Thiel complained about feeling "blackmailed" by public moral expectations to give something back. Other billionaires lamented that Victorian magnates at least got praised for their philanthropy - they could "wash away their sins" and be recast as virtuous. Now the public has stopped being grateful.
When billionaires start complaining that moral pressure from ordinary people is becoming "very, very dangerous" it means the pressure is landing. It means the story people are telling about extreme wealth and power is shifting. That's not nothing. It is how the ground moves before institutions change. And it signals to us that we need to keep doing what we're doing. More of the same please.
And there is a bigger question opening up. Writing for our blog, our Co-Executive Director Priya Sahni-Nicholas asks whether this moment is putting capitalism itself at a crossroads. If the UK has to build an economy more resilient and independent; less exposed to the whims of superpowers and the chaos of billionaire adventurism shouldn't we also be asking who that economy is built for? If we're rebuilding, reviewing and reinventing anyway, shouldn't it work for everyone?
These are not the kind of questions that local elections answer answer, but they're the questions that make local elections matter. Democratic participation isn't just about any single vote or any single issue. It's about whether we're building the kind of active, engaged political culture that can eventually match the scale of the problem.
Equality Trust works with local authorities and councils every day to shift power toward people, to make sure communities have a genuine voice in decisions that affect their lives, for example via our work on the Socio-Economic Duty). We know that local government is not a consolation prize. It's part of the infrastructure through which pressure gets built and change becomes possible.
Billionaires are already rattled by the moral pressure of public opinion. Building the structural alternatives that permanently redistribute power will take longer. But as the current moment makes clear, pressure is building. Go and vote.
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